


Flock Together

by salt_n_pepa



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 1970s AU, Camping, Firewatch au, M/M, PTSD, Past Riley/Sam, Polyamory, Post Vietnam War AU, Sam's dad, Scars, Therapy, Threesome, Veteran au, implied past Natasha/Sam, lesbian!natasha, mention of war, mentions of off-screen/past violence, park ranger au, past/current SteveBucky, strong Sam/Nat friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-29
Updated: 2018-02-23
Packaged: 2019-01-06 20:02:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 56,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12217935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salt_n_pepa/pseuds/salt_n_pepa
Summary: War wounds deeper than most men have the strength to heal. To give himself a fighting chance against those bleeding war wounds, Sam takes a summer job as a ranger in a national forest. Patrolling his designated areas and keeping an eye out for fires, campers, and wildlife replace his day job and therapy sessions. His only companions out in the semi-wilderness are the two other faceless rangers on the other side of his walkie-talkie, his letters from home, and his scars.





	1. If A Riley Falls In The Jungle With No One To Catch Him, Did He Die

**Author's Note:**

> Hi!!!!! So this is my submission for the SWBB! I have to thank the incredible mods for everything they did and how easy and fun they made this whole thing. And most importantly I have to thank the artist who chose to do a piece for my fic! Helene /misspaperjoker did an incredible job and her art is just absolutely perfect and she's amazing!!!! So yeah please go look at everything else she's ever drawn because it's all fantastic and amazing :D
> 
> And also please comment if you liked it, comments are my lifeblood :D

 

 

by [misspaperjoker](http://misspaperjoker.tumblr.com)

 

 

 

There wasn’t too much that made sense in Sam’s life after Riley got shot out of the sky. So much of Sam had fallen with him that finding all the pieces and putting himself back together was an impossible feat. Maybe not so much impossible as it was pointless. It wouldn’t get Riley back, no matter how well for himself he did, Riley would always be dead and he would always be the one to outlive him.

After the war ended in ’75, there was a period of limbo. No one coming back knew how to reconcile their experiences over there with their lives back home. Of course, that was true of all wars, and the veterans of Korea and WWII reminded him of that every chance they got.

“It’s this way for every war past and to come, kid, nothin’ you saw over there’s any worse than what we’re here for.” But Sam hadn’t been in every war past and to come. He didn’t care if anyone had it worse or better than him, he just knew part of him was gone. Dropped in the vietnamese jungle somewhere, nameless and hopeless with Riley’s body. It took a lot of his fellow men months, even years, to admit they needed help. It took Sam the car ride from the airport back to his shoebox apartment.

That was where the VA came in. Sam knew of it, everyone did. His relatives and his friends’ relatives, the ones who were in Korea and WWII, they used it. Some shamelessly, some not. Most pretended they were using the other services, sorting out their pensions and getting an appointment with a doctor for an old war wound instead of debasing themselves and admitting they needed a head shrinker, that they were all cracked up.

The months that followed his return had him sitting in the waiting room at the VA at least twice a week, his other days were spent in the audience of a group therapy lecture or running. He got a lot of it out with running. He ran every morning and every night, as far as his legs would take him. No destination, barely ever a starting point. He just ran. He called it a healthy coping mechanism that kept his mind clear, his therapist called it avoidance and sometimes even an addiction. Some nights, when his mind wouldn’t sleep, he’d run out of his front door, leaving it swinging on the hinge, and wouldn’t stop until he hit a city limit. Maybe it was an addiction but it was a hell of a lot better than being alone with his thoughts. 

“I think you should move away,” said Natasha. She’d known him since they were kids, they grew up two streets from each other. No one cried harder than her when he got drafted. Except Sam.

“You want me gone, Romanoff?” laughed Sam. He took an unsolicited, enormous bite out of her sandwich.

“I want you happier,” replied Natasha, not a hint of smile on her face. “Ever since you got back you’re so…”

“We’re all ’so’,” spat Sam. “That’s what happens, Nat, that’s what happens. I can’t undo it, therapy can’t undo it, even time can’t undo it. So I’m just gonna set here until I can go a full day without thinking about it.”

“Did you just say ‘set here’? You sound more and more like your mama these days,” said Natasha. Sam’s father was from Maine, his mother from Mississippi. They met in the middle and settled down in D.C.. If anyone riled him up too much the south came out of him.

“I don’t sound like my mama,” said Sam. He did. And Natasha was right, it was getting more and more frequent because Sam was getting more and more agitated with each passing day.

“You don’t have anything keeping you here, there are VA’s everywhere.”

“And what are you?”

“Nothin’ keeping me here either,” said Natasha with a grin. He considered it, for a second or too. He wondered what life would be like, him and Natasha living on a baron farmland in the midwest.

“No,” said Sam, snapping out of his daydream. “I can’t uproot you too.”

“You don’t have to be brave, Sam. That war took so much from you, I don’t want you to lose anything else.”

“It’s only been six months. I’ll find my way, I just need a little more time.”

Six more months passed. He improved but not by much. His mother’s accent made an appearance at least once a day. Therapy helped but didn’t solve anything, his runs helped but didn’t solve anything. He got part-time work at a florists. Natasha got him the job, said being in a shop that was known for happiness and tranquility would help. It did on some level, in some small ways. Sorting, organizing, cataloguing bouquets and corsages kept his mind out of the war. But once he left he was wracked with guilt over forgetting. It wasn’t fair, in his mind, to forget. Riley didn’t have that luxury, why should he?

 

 

 

“And how’s that going?” asked Dr. Briar. 

“Okay, I guess,” shrugged Sam. “It’s money.”

“What do you do in there all day, give me a rundown of your chores.”

“Well…In the mornings I stock the fridges, and assemble the bouquets. In the afternoons I sell them. And then my shift ends,” said Sam. The offices at the VA were rundown. They were over thirty years old and it showed in the wallpaper, the floors, even the furniture. Everything felt stagnant and unchanging, including his therapist.

“So does anyone else work in the shop with you?”

“Uh…kinda. There’s another girl there that stocks shelves on the weekends.”

“You said another.”

“What?”

“You said ‘another girl’ instead of ‘a girl’,” said Dr. Briar. He was hard to read. He’d make observations about Sam, and keep to himself his own opinions. His face was always stoic and his eyes always locked on Sam’s face no matter what.

“So what?”

“You tell me.”

“You think I’m a girl, Doctor?” said Sam with an eyeroll he hoped wasn’t too obvious.

“No.”

“Then what?”

“You tell me.”

“If I could tell you I wouldn’t need therapy,” snapped Sam.

“Tell me about Riley,” said Dr. Briar.

“No,” said Sam. His usual answer. He’d made the mistake of mentioning Riley’s name months before and Dr. Briar wouldn’t let it go. He wouldn’t stop pestering and bother Sam about it and every new analysis revolved around Riley.

“Why not?”

“He’s got nothing to do with why I’m here,” said Sam for the millionth time.

“I don’t believe that,” replied Dr. Briar. It was the first time in a year Sam had heard him voice an opinion. Though he said it more as if it were fact.

“Why not?”

“Because you won’t speak about him. If he was so inconsequential to why we meet every Tuesday and Friday, you would’ve humored me and told me already. But you haven’t. And I don’t think your healing is going to go much farther until you let the rest of this out.”

“This is why none of us in the waiting room out there wanna come in here! You shrinks think you know everything goin’ on inside someone else’s head, you think you know what we need to talk about—ya don’t! You just wanna hear somethin’ interestin’ so you can stick me in a rubber room and stop botherin’ with me.”

Dr. Briar held a stiff silence for an eternity. Sam caught his breath and relaxed all the muscles that had tensed. “Is that what you really think I’m after, Sam?” asked Dr. Briar earnestly. “An interesting story?”

“How should I know?”

“You still don’t have a handle on that southern accent do you?” said Dr. Briar.

“I’ve never had a handle on it. Who says I want one?”

Dr. Briar shrugged. “I never said it was a bad thing. I’m just noticing you can’t control it even if you wanted.”

“It’s all I’ve got left of my mama, why do you want it gone?!” spat Sam.

“Is that all you have of her’s? Her accent? _Sometimes_?”

“What are you getting at Doc?”

“Sam, when you left for the war what was with you? In your home?”

“Nothing. You know that already. I didn’t have a thing to my name. That’s why the draft board didn’t take a second look at my physical before they threw me in.”

“So what would you say is your strongest tie to this earth if not your home?”

“What?”

“My strongest tie is my daughter. She’s about your age, a little older now. I call her Magpie, as a child she would hoard my wife’s jewelry. I could lose everything as long as I had her. Who, or what, is your Magpie?”

“I…I don’t know. My friend Natasha. My dad.”

“Not your friend Riley?” said Dr. Briar.

Sam’s jaw clenched. “The hour was up five minutes ago.”

“I won’t keep you,” said Dr. Briar.

 

 

 

“Natasha, what would you have done if I died over there?” She and Sam sat on the edge of a fountain. 2am hit thirty minutes before. In another late night jolt of restlessness, Sam barreled out of his apartment for a run and met Natasha on the way. Natasha didn’t have the same stamina so the run gave way to a walk gave way to sitting on the damp edge of the fountain.

“Don’t say it,” said Natasha. “I still…somewhere in me think it’s a dream that you’re back. That I’ll wake up and remember you’ve been dead all along.”

“What am I to you?”

“You’re my whole life, Sam. Aren’t I yours?”

“Course you are…I was just making sure.”

Natasha reached down into the lukewarm water of the fountain and pulled out a quarter. She flipped it off her thumb while she spoke. “Ya know…Because you came back alive, I’ll never know what it was like for you to lose Riley…and I can’t imagine what you’ve been going through.”

“Neither can I,” said Sam.

“Is Dr. Briar helping?”

“I haven’t told him,” admitted Sam.

“Sam…” sighed Natasha. “That’s what he’s there for. You’re wasting precious months and years of yourself.”

“What if he’s…not on my side about things,” said Sam. “What if he…” he shrugged “reports me or…puts me in a ward or something.”

“He’s known you a year now, Sam. You really think he’d do that?”

Sam shrugged again. “Ya know…at this point…I really just wanna forget the whole thing even if it means forgetting him.”

“You don’t mean that,” said Natasha.

“No I don’t.”

“You’ll tell him next session.”

“I’ll tell him next session.”

Natasha rested her head on his shoulder. “I love you, Sammy.”

“I love you back.”

She took his hand in hers. “When are we gonna run away together?”

“Soon as I get the money.” He kissed her head.

 

 

 

Sam stared Dr. Briar down, Dr. Briar stared back with a mostly blank face as usual. He was getting tired of the one-sided hostility in their relationship.

“Sam you _do_ have to say something if you want the session to continue,” said Dr. Briar.

The window for a smart comeback came and went and left Sam silent. “Okay…what are we talkin’ about today?”

“Well you told me you and Riley were lovers and then you stared at me for…” he checked his watch, “seven minutes straight.”

“I recall, I was there.”

Dr. Briar cracked a smile. “I think we should keep talking about Riley.”

“I think not,” replied Sam. His third day of therapy had consisted of Sam telling Dr. Briar every detail of the mission with Riley, a play by play of the worst six minutes and forty five seconds of his life. He gave Dr. Briar everything he needed to know except…well the _one_ detail he left out. “What else is there to say, anyway?”

“Tell me more,” said Dr. Briar. “How’d it start, why’d it start? Who else knew? What was your favorite thing about him?”

Sam sucked his teeth. “Nah…”

“‘Nah’?” asked Dr. Briar.

“It means no. I don’t know why you should get to know all this much about my life.”

“Because.” He gestured to his diplomas nailed to the wall.

“Fuck that, Briar. Why should I trust some white guy I know nothing about with my entire life? No offense, but you don’t look very tough, I don’t think it’d take much for someone to get information out ‘a ya!” spat Sam.

For the first time in a year of seeing him, Dr. Briar’s facial expression changed from generally content default to confusion, or maybe concern. Sam wasn’t well versed in reading him. He rested his chin in his hand and stared at Sam with a furrowed brow. Confusion or concern, whichever it was, it was strong. “Sam, it’s a huge part of my job to know that you trust me.”

Sam shrugged. “I know but you’ve given me no reason to.”

“Have I ever given you reason not to?”

Sam stayed silent. Technically he was right, Dr. Briar was trustworthy. He never reacted, there was no chance of him actively spreading what he knew about Sam to his doctor friends. But…still. “It’s hard to trust some…guy. You know everything about me now, _everything_. I don’t remember your first name most days.”

Nothing in particular set him off, in fact he didn’t notice it until the tears bubbled over and down his cheeks. Hot and wet and soaking into the collar of his shirt before he had time to process them. Sam used the back of his sleeve to clear them away but they kept coming and coming and coming.

“Sam, what’s wrong?”

He shook his head. “I don’t fucking know anymore, Doc. I just wanna go home.”

“Sam, you are home,” said Dr. Briar.

“I mean _home_ home, I wanna just forget this whole thing ever happened, ya know?” said Sam. He wiped his cheeks too roughly again, there was no hiding the embarrassment he felt, falling apart in front of Briar like he was.

“You don’t, Sam. In fact I think you want to remember even more of it but you’re afraid to—“

“Where the fuck do you even get off shrinkin’ vets, huh?! What the fuck do you know about it?!” screamed Sam. The tears egged him on, made him want to get more out, scream more, yell more, cry more, throw a bigger tantrum, break something. Dr. Briar had degrees but he didn’t understand. He was a petty officer behind a desk in Korea, he’d never seen a day of combat. Who was he to tell Sam how to feel about the war. “I lost him out there, Doc, I had to watch it! What the fuck do you know about losing someone like that in a situation like that, you’re not even married!”

“I was,” said Dr. Briar in his usual calm voice, somehow his voice was volumes louder than Sam’s wailing. Sam froze mid-tantrum.

“That right?” said Sam with his choked voice. Dr. Briar would’ve kept his first name secret if he could’ve, getting a glimpse into his life was rare and usually because he was getting a point across. This didn’t feel quite the same.

“Yes.”

“How’d you lose her?”

“Divorce,” said Dr. Briar.

Sam saw red, he threw a coffee table book — one he’d read often, it was about dog breeds — across the room and into the framed diplomas on Dr. Briar’s wall. “That’s not the same!”

“I lost a sister too,” offered Dr. Briar.

“Is she estranged or some other bullshit?!” snapped Sam.

“No she’s dead. Died when I was 16.”

A silence set in between them. Longer than they’d ever had before, excluding the first day when Sam hadn’t said a word. He eyed Dr. Briar up and down waiting for more, or less, or something. But nothing happened. So he sat back in his armchair and started pulling the threads from their stitches again.

“You can’t trust me because you don't know me…But that’s my job. To be an anonymous man in your life that you can unload every last bit of baggage on. Someone you don’t know anything about, or care anything about.”

“Or you just too chicken to reciprocate here, Briar? It’s easy to hear it all and write it all down—Try being on this side of the fuckin’ couch!” spat Sam.

“Alright,” said Dr. Briar. He put his pen down and gripped the rests of his armchair. “My sister, Margaret, died in a house fire when I was sixteen. A house fire _I_ started. On purpose.”

Sam froze for a moment. That sure sounded like a murder confession and Dr. Briar was the type of tall, wiry man that would moonlight as a killer. “You…”

“When I was younger I wanted to be a scientist. Specifically a chemist. I snuck out of my room at night to toy with an at-home chemistry kit, trying to start a fire with these two compounds. It worked but it took the house with it. It caught the curtains in my mother’s kitchen and never went out. I yelled for my family, grabbed my dog and waited in the lawn. It was a slow death too. The burns got her in the end. She was in the hospital for a month before it got too much and she passed.”

“Oh.” He still didn’t know Dr. Briar’s first name.

“My brothers knew, my parents knew, my neighbors knew. It was my fault. Even Margaret knew.”

“I’m…sorry that happened.”

“Which brings me to your constant running,” said Dr. Briar. Sam cocked his head.

“I don’t…What does your sister have to do with my running?”

Dr. Briar leant forward. “Sam, after that fire I trained to be a firefighter.”

“Makes sense.”

“Does it though, Sam?” asked Dr. Briar. He leant even more forward. “What would come of me learning to fight fires?”

Of course. Dr. Briar never said one word out of place and spontaneously sharing a deep secret of his hadn’t been spontaneous at all, it was another fucking lesson about how to get better. Sam sank back in his chair. “Nothing, I guess.”

“Same with your running.”

“Astute.” Sam all but rolled his eyes.

“We have one major difference here though.”

“And what would that be?”

“I am justified in my firefighting, you are not in your running,” said Dr. Briar. Sam held in the verbal attack he wanted to unleash, he wanted to hear his reasoning before he bit his head off. But to insinuate that his pain was more justified _earned_ him a tongue lashing. “By which of course I mean, I _could_ have done something to save my sister. In fact I could’ve done quite a lot and I didn’t and it was wholly my fault. You did everything you could’ve done. Nothing could have saved Riley.”

Sam’s mouth quirked back. “You don’t know that, Doc…”

“Sam, you’ve recounted the story of that mission so many times. I know what happened. Six hundred feet apart, flying over expected gunfire, Riley went down and you dove after him. There is no outcome where you get to the ground before he does, he was just too far away. And you’ve said many times you were flying too close together anyway.”

“You don’t…know,” huffed Sam. “I hesitated. I saw him falling outta the sky and I hesitated and waited for him to recover and come back up…it took me _so long_ to realize he wasn’t gonna.” Sam rubbed his tired face and staved off more tears. The vivid memory of Riley’s lifeless body spiraling towards the jungle canopy flooded the forefront of his mind. “I hesitated.”

“So what?” Dr. Briar rested his forearms on his thighs. “So what if you hesitated. There is no way you would’ve gotten to the ground before him even if you started your dive the second he got hit. All this running, Sam, no matter how strong you get you’ll never be strong enough to reach him in time—“

“You don’t know that!” shouted Sam, surprising himself. Somewhere deep he knew that was why he ran, why he got the urges to keep his body in motion in the middle of the night. There was no way for him to know if it was true but he wondered constantly. If he had been a little bit stronger, could he have saved Riley. He’d never know for sure so as a compromise his body ached and cried along with his mind whenever he wasn’t doing something to build his muscles back up. “You don’t know _for sure_ that if I had been a little better shape, or had a little more control over my wings—“

“I do.”

“You don’t!”

“I do!” insisted Dr. Briar. “From the numbers, however round-about they may be, there is no mathematical miracle in which you save Riley! There was nothing you could do.”

“What the fuck am I supposed to do with that, Doc? Huh?! What do I do if there’s nothing about me I can fix? This,” Sam gestured to each of them, “this doesn’t help me to know that no matter what the fuck I did he was gonna die anyway!”

“I know it doesn’t help but it’s the truth. But either way for us, Sam, I can learn how to put out fires all day but I can’t go back in time and save my sister. You can push your body over the edge until you’re super-human but you can’t bring Riley back.”

“Well,” Sam wiped the stray tears from his cheeks. “If it wasn’t me who let him die who was it?”

“Riley did everything perfectly too, Sam. You were two boys, too young to be where you were at the rank you were at, in a country you didn’t belong in doing missions you shouldn’t have been doing. If you really feel the need to blame someone for his death, look no further than the army. You and Riley are clean.”

The tears down Sam’s face were no longer singular stray tears but an even flow. He nodded and rubbed his eyes out again. It wasn’t that he hadn’t thought this to himself before, that he couldn’t have done anything and neither could Riley, it was someone else saying it back to him. Saying that no matter how many ways his mind twisted the scenario, he never beat Riley to the ground. He never stopped the bullet that had his blood pouring out of his chest.

“I don’t know why I’m getting so…” Sam wiped his eyes. “It’s been a fuckin’ year.”

“Well…you’ve kept a pretty tight lid on this whole thing,” said Dr. Briar. “Not to mention it’s never easy to lose someone like this.”

“A Magpie.”

“A Magpie.” Dr. Briar leant back in his chair and jotted a few notes down on his pad. “Today was a good session, Sam. I think we hit a few good nerves.”

 

 

 

 _‘And I’m here to tell you’_ he gestured to the viewer, _‘that your local VA is a font of resources for veterans old and new. Therapy and psychiatry sessions, beginning this year, are completely free for vets of Korea and WWII. So please,’_ he gave a winning smile to the camera, ‘ _make the most of it!’_

Sam switched off the TV in the flower shop. He’d heard that ad roughly 87 times that day and it was getting old. Captain America, _the_ Captain America, officially endorsed the VA. For years everyone assumed that he liked the VA,but now there was an official endorsement. If _Captain America_ of all people endorsed the VA and specifically their mental health services, the stigma would start to wear away and maybe a few more vets would wander into Dr. Briar’s. That was the thought, anyway.

Sam didn’t see the point of it. The men who wanted the help were gonna get it with or without Captain America, and the other men weren’t going to be convinced by a comic book character.

“Sam, we’re closing early tonight, my sister’s having a baby shower tomorrow and I’m flying out tonight.” Sam’s manager came to the front of the store and began locking up the fridges that stored the more expensive bouquets.

Sam helped close up shop and said goodbye. His car, a beat up old LeSabre named Louis, took some convincing before it finally decided to turnover. Sam thanked Louis and barreled home. These days when he got the itching in his skin, the insatiable urge to run, he only let himself listen to it every third time. Dr. Briar wanted him to ignore those urges every single time but Sam argued that he still needed exercise, deep-seated trauma aside.

And that itching made itself known on Sam’s drive home. With every fiber of his being, he wanted to get out and run the remaining miles back to his apartment. Turning the radio up made it worse, turning it down made it worse. He drummed his steering wheel and refrained from honking at the stand-still traffic.

It cleared, for a brief shining moment the traffic cleared and Sam floored it and weaved through a few cars and was on his way for exactly one mile.

The cars all heaved to a screeching halt. Sam did the same. A small but inconvenient wreck blocked the entire road. It must’ve just happened considering the complete lack of sirens and complete flooding of people getting out of their cars to help. Sam was three cars back from the action and in no real mood to join in. If he stepped one foot out of the car he’d run.

Someone screamed bloody murder. Sam looked up from adjusting his radio to find either the source or the cause of the screams. It didn’t take long. Some _thing_ was walking towards the car wreck, coming towards the traffic. Sam squinted, his eyes wouldn’t focus on the small mob coming towards him. One man led the group of them. All Sam could see of him was his too-long hair and his face mask. He sprayed the traffic with bullets.

Sam jumped out of Louis and kissed him goodbye. He survived Vietnam, he sure as hell wasn’t gonna die on his commute home. The bullets continued, the screaming continued, and Sam continued to have a horrible vantage point for the whole thing.

Then a bang. No, a boom. No, a crash. A _something_ happened. It shook the highway and caused and equal amount of screams as it did cheers. Sam was stationed behind Louis and gauging what was happening by staring into the reflection of in the bumper of the car in front of him. The man in that car eventually crawled out and joined him.

“You see what’s happenin’ over there?” asked Sam.

“Shooting,” said the man. “But I think I saw the shield.”

“The what?”

“ _Cap’s Shield!_ You know Captain America right?”

“Yes I know Captain America,” groaned Sam. “You really think he’s here? On our ride home?”

“Hey, he’s gotta be somewhere right?” laughed the man. He peeked over the edge of Sam’s car. “It _is_ him! It is!”

“Listen, man, if someone’s after _Captain America_ , the two of us have no business hangin’ around. We gotta get gone,” said Sam.

“Well…how?”

More bullets sprayed. Before Sam could even attempt to answer the man was crawling back into his car and reversing until the car behind him gave way. Sam waved goodbye to him as his car moved backwards inch by inch. He waited the bullets out.

Another bang, boom, or otherwise crash. This time not yards away but directly in front of him. This time not the iconic sound of bullets deflecting off of The Shield, but instead the owner of The Shield barreling into the crevice between Sam’s car and the car next to him.

“Ah fuck,” groaned Captain America. He was wedged between the two cars, on his back, his shield covering his core thankfully, but he looked unable to regain any traction. Like a turtle on his back. Sam wasn’t often starstruck but he was in that moment. Cap shook his head to regain his cognition. Sam caught his eye and awkwardly smiled.

“Hey.” That was the best he could under the circumstances

“Hey,” replied Captain America. “Um…can you gimme a…”

“Yeah, I gotcha.” Sam wrangled him backwards into the tight space between the bumpers. He slid backwards against the cars he was wedged against until he landed next to Sam. Sam guided him down and sort of…cradled him on accident.

“Eh,” said Captain America, lying in his arms. “What’s your name?”

“Sam Wilson,” said Sam Wilson.

“Steve Rogers,” said Steve Rogers. “Um…could you help direct civilians?”

“I’m a—I can help something harder,” said Sam. More bullets rang out. Captain America sprang to his feet and charged back into the fray.

Sam followed him. He grabbed one of the shards of glass as a makeshift weapon and cut the gun off of one of the henchmen with the masked man. Captain America jumped and deflected the fighting down onto the lower streets, the henchmen went with which was where Sam came in. He spit bullets out onto the ground below and picked off the henchmen one at a time. Captain America had bigger problems and the only indication he gave of his appreciation of Sam’s help was a wave in his direction as the masked man pursued him.

 

 

 

“You could’ve been killed!” Natasha dabbed the cut on Sam’s arm with more antiseptic. “What the hell were you thinking you asshole!”

“Nat, I helped _the_ Captain America. I might as well put that on my fuckin’ resume,” laughed Sam.

“I was worried sick,” spat Natasha.

“For like five minutes,” replied Sam. “C’mon, it wasn’t that big a deal.”

Natasha threw the alcohol-soaked towel into the sink and stormed off to pour herself more wine. She worried too much, the same way Sam ran too much.

“Nat, come on…I’m okay. I’m always gonna be okay,” said Sam. Natasha took a glug of wine and let Sam come up behind her and wrap his arms around her.

“I know you are…It’s just…I was so worried about you ever day while you were gone,” Natasha turned in his arms to face him. Her big green eyes boring into his. “Everyday I was worried about every step you made and when you finally came home I thought it was over.” Her eyes welled and glistened. “I really thought I wouldn’t have to worry like this again…I know it’s nothing compared to what you went through..."

“Hey,” said Sam, swaying the two of them a bit, “we both went through a lot and it’s gonna be awhile before we’re both over it. I’m sorry I got you worked up, I should’ve called you the second I got off that highway—I _knew_ they were gonna report on it, I should’ve called you.”

Natasha nestled against his chest, he held her tighter and swayed more. “I love you, Sam.”

“Love you too, Nat.”

“When are we gonna run away together?” said Natasha into Sam’s t-shirt.

"Soon as I get the money,” replied Sam.

 

 

 

Sam woke at Natasha’s apartment. He peeled Natasha’s arms off of him and headed to the kitchen to make them both breakfast. He switched on the little TV on her counter. The sounds of the TV slowly whirring awake buzzed around the kitchen, along with Sam. If someone were to judge Natasha by her kitchen they’d assume she never ate which always made Sam’s task of making himself a breakfast that wasn’t cereal a bit harder.

‘ _Yesterday early evening, Steven Rogers, otherwise known as Captain America, caused a commotion on an elevated segment of the Beltway.’_ Sam put down the cereal he eventually decided on and cranked the volume. He already got a small shoutout on the local news the night before but the real fame came with the national news. ‘ _CCTV picked up this footage of the incident.’_

The footage showed the initial car accident that Sam hadn’t actually seen for himself. Whoever the masked man was, shot out a series of tires and drivers and forced a blockade with the accident. Sam waited and saw his own car appear in the bottom left of the screen.

“What’re you watching?” croaked Natasha behind him.

“SH!” Sam gestured to the screen and invited Natasha to huddle around it with him.

He saw himself climb out of Louis and saw the man from the car behind him crawl up next to him. And then Captain America landed between the two cars and wriggled into Sam’s lap.

‘ _If you are careful to watch the bottom left corner you can see Steve Rogers enlisting a civilian to join the fighting.’_ The playback of the footage continued with Sam’s contribution of stealing and firing a gun to cover for Steve. ‘ _Has Steve Rogers finally gone too far? Enlisting civilians to fight his battles is a low we never thought we’d see him reach.’_

“How do we know it was _his_ battle?” asked Natasha. “That looks like standard opposing military force to me.”

‘ _Watch the footage back again.’_ The CCTV footage played back with the news anchor’s voiceover. ’ _The man leading this gang of thugs has been identified as none other than James Barnes. The famous, and now perhaps infamous, right hand of Steve Rogers. Either a familial spat between the two of them has escalated to this point, or Captain America’s closest friend is now working with the enemy. In either scenario, it’s clear that Steve Rogers has dropped the ball significantly. Can he still be trusted to represent America and Americans alike when he can’t even be trusted to keep his arguments out of our streets and tax payer’s pockets.’_

CCTV footage played and followed the fighting between Steve, and James apparently, through a few more streets. James was carrying heavy weaponry and the destruction amped up the further they moved from where Sam had last seen them.

‘ _The collateral damage of this lover’s quarrel,’_ the anchor laughed, ‘ _is coming out of the tax payer’s money.'_

 _‘That’s true,’_ said the mostly useless coanchor. _‘The tax payers have already payed for his reanimation and now we have to pay for his home troubles.’_

‘ _Exactly,’_ replied the anchor. _‘What right does Captain America have to run amuck in our country on the dime of our citizens?’_

Natasha switched it off before the coanchor could answer that question. “Where the hell do they get off—If that even is some guy Cap used to know, he’s clearly like…”

“Evil?” offered Sam.

“Well—evil, yeah, but why are they making that Captain America’s fault?”

“They blame everything wrong with America on that guy, I’m sure he’s used to it. The point is there is video _proof_ of me meeting Captain America! And the whole country saw it!”

“Too bad their using your heroism against him,” sighed Natasha. “But you did look very cool. Not many men can say they cradled Steve Rogers like an overgrown baby.”

“I’m putting it on my resume.” Natasha laughed. “I mean it!”

 

 

 

“So how do you feel about Captain America officially endorsing us?” asked Dr. Briar.

Sam shrugged. “It’s cool I guess…Bigger crowd in the waiting room.” The idea was that Captain America advocating mental health would send the amount of vets seeking recovery through the roof. It worked. But it was very unceremonious.

“A few of my patients aren’t huge fans. They think he’s a war hawk,” said Dr. Briar.

“I don’t know…” said Sam with a long groan. “I mean he was in favor of WWII but…I mean that war was justified right? At least in the eyes of the people in it. And he wasn’t awake in time for Korea…I don’t think he’s had time to be a war hawk. It’s not his fault the army made him a mascot.”

“So are you an old fan or anything?” asked Dr. Briar.

“I was, yeah,” said Sam, a smile crept onto his face. “I read his comics as a kid every damn day, I can probably still quote some of ‘em back to you. My dad would pick ‘em up on his way back from work. I’d get to see my dad _and_ the newest Captain America issue.”

“Do you remember when they thawed him back in ’72?”

“I do,” said Sam proudly. “I was going on 17. I thought it was part of a big elaborate prank. I didn’t think the real guy was actually coming back to life.”

“Is that why you decided to help him out that day on the bridge?” asked Dr. Briar. He was horrible at light conversation, all wanted to get to the root of shit for no reason.

“I just wanted to help.”

“Why _you_ though?”

“He landed in my lap,” laughed Sam. “I was getting ready to jump up and leave but he landed right in my lap. That’s a sign from God right?” Dr. Briar shrugged. “Ya know, not everything has a deeper meaning to it, Doc. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

Dr. Briar smiled. He did that more often now that Sam was being completely honest with him. “I guess so. I just thought you of all people wouldn’t be thrilled about jumping back into that.”

“Doc, when _Captain America_ needs your help you can’t say no.”

“Have you gotten recognized? You were on national news after all.”

Sam shook his head. “Either people are white and don’t care who it was on those tapes, or their not and don’t believe it was me. I think I’m gonna have to start showing people pictures of Louis.”

“Louis?”

“My car’s name. My first cat was Louis too. Is there something _psychological_ in there?”

“No but my car’s named Louis too.”

Sam cracked a smile.

“So,” Dr. Briar changed subjects by crossing his legs the other way, “How’ve you been feeling? The running and so on?”

“It’s…getting better,” said Sam. “I still wake up and wanna run at least every other night.”

“Do you ever give in?”

“No. But it’s only been a month so there’s plenty of time for me to slip,” said Sam with a smile that Dr. Briar did not reciprocate.

“Ya know Sam I’ve been thinking quite a lot and I’d like you to get a temporary change in scenery.”

“Not you too,” groaned Sam.

“Who else?”

“Natasha thinks I should move away. Keeps suggesting it like it’s the cure-all.”

“Well…I disagree very much with that,” said Dr. Briar, a nice way of telling Sam she was dead wrong. “In my professional opinion, you need an interim existence somewhere. You’ve gone from home to _war_ of all places, and then right back home. A lot of the men who come here feel disjointed and disillusioned with their lives. It’s hard to process the jump between realities, so many men revert to pretending one is fake. And it’s hit or miss, 50/50. Some men refer to war as ‘the real world’ while others refer to home.

"You…well, for different reasons, you want them both to be real and I think that’s why getting over Riley’s death has been so hard for you.”

“So…you’re…” sighed Sam. “You’re saying that I’m…not adjusting?”

“No, actually you’re doing very well with the transition back into home life. The coping mechanism of completely denying the legitimacy of one reality works. If you pretend the war isn’t real it won’t feel real and maybe on some level you don’t suffer that trauma. Of course, it’s not full proof and not at all lasting. So even though it’s a traumatic death that’s forcing you to reconcile these two lives you’ve had to lead, I’m glad it’s happening.”

“But?” prompted Sam.

“But I think you need somewhere that isn’t home and that isn’t the war to…sit back for a few weeks or months even. Process what happened to you in the war, and what your home life is now, somewhere far away from either.”

“I have a job—I can’t just up and leave! Doc, I think I need to stay here—I need to be around what I know!” said Sam.

“I think the panic you’re feeling about leaving means you should.”

“I was panicked about going to ‘nam and I sure as hell shouldn’t’ve gone there.” Dr. Briar was silent. As if he’d made his point. And he had. Sam had to leave D.C. now or forever be afraid of leaving it, thinking it was another big mistake like shipping off to war. He hated himself for proving Dr. Briar’s point but he had to remember they were on the same side. “You’ve made your point."

“Good. So I think you should go somewhere calm. Somewhere completely unlike here. A small city—a town even. Something more in-tune with nature. Somewhere reminiscent of Vietnam even.”

“To get me back on the horse?” mocked Sam.

“Exactly. I want you to live your life as freely as possible and you can’t do that if you’re scared of parts of the country, much less parts of the world.”

Sam laughed. “Is the endgame for me to vacation in Vietnam?”

Dr. Briar shared the laugh and shook his head. “Maybe a long while from now, but until then I want you to be able to leave your hometown without panicking, and explore the world without being afraid of what you might see.”

“Okay but what about my job and shit?” spat Sam.

“You work part-time here as a group-therapy assistant and part time at a flower shop. You can find one fulltime job anywhere else and it’s only for a little while, not forever. I’ll make sure you keep your job here when you come back and I’m sure you’ll keep your job at the flower shop. You’ve got no excuses left, Sam. Next session I want a list of possible locations.”

 

 

 

Sam took home the Penny Saver. It’d been two weeks and the short list of destinations was non existent. He suggested places that were ‘too unrealistic’ or ’too big of a city’. He wanted Sam forced from his comfort zone but Sam was quite comfortable in his comfort zone. So he flipped through the Penny Saver hoping someone would be selling an apartment in the perfect area of the perfect city of the perfect state.

His front door jostled open. Only one other person had the key as far as he knew. “Sam! I brought dinner. I’m gonna _cook_.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah!” She strode in and planted two grocery bags on the counter. “I think it’s time I make an effort. Eventually I should learn this shit.”

“Does that mean we don’t have a backup plan if…” began Sam.

“If what?” said Natasha. “If it’s bad?”

“No, no, I’m sure you’re an excellent chef.”

Natasha slammed a cutting board onto the countertop and then the raw chicken on top of that. She helped herself to the knives and started hacking away randomly.

“Oh, Sam, I think I found something for you. Get the paper out of my bag.” Sam dug the newspaper out of her bag and flipped around it until he found the classified article she had circle in red for him.

**LOVE NATURE? LIKE YOUR PEACE AND QUIET?**

THEN JOIN THE TEAM OF PROUD RANGERS Firewatch positions open for Bighorn National Forest May-August, room and board included Must be willing and able to hike daily.   
  
---  
  
“A park ranger?” said Sam.

“Yeah,” Natasha slathered the chicken in random spices. At least it’d have flavor, even if it was bad flavor. “Remember you said Dr. Briar thought it’d be good for you to get not just out of the big city but into some _real_ nature. Well what’s got more nature than a fuckin’ national park?”

“But this is a job too.”

“I know! Isn’t it perfect?”

“It would be but I’m sure tons of people wanna do this shit. Tons of people who’re a lot closer.”

“You’re making excuses,” said Natasha, and she was right.


	2. Chapter 2

  

 _‘What I don’t understand here is, what right does Captain America have to be running around fighting random—‘_ began the anchor.

 _‘Well that’s just it isn’t it,’_ interrupted one of two guests on the show, ‘ _it wasn’t someone random someone. He himself has confirmed that it was in fact his friend from the war.’_

_‘Exactly! He’s dragging his personal spats and issues into the public domain here. He’s stopping traffic, causing thousands of dollars of damage, enlisting civilians to help him fight his battles and all we get at the end of it is a flimsy explanation.’_

_‘He gave us more than that,’_ spat the second guest. ‘ _He gave us the information on the background of James Barnes and why he was attacking him and civilians on the bridge that day. We know now that he was brainwashed by the enemy and that he’s been in rehab to get his faculties back ever since that day. This is clearly an isolated incident. The only reason it’s such a big deal is because everyone knows who he is and he’s involved in things much higher than most citizens.’_

The anchor and the other guest rolled their eyes.

_‘Oh please! He should be treated as any other citizen and any other citizen would be thrown in prison for this. Not only was his best friend working with the enemy but he risked the safety of the American people as a whole to get him back, and then endangered more lives more immediately by bringing this fight out onto a highway at rush hour. I mean honestly I don’t understand how you can defend him at this point.’_

The first guest nodded his head, the second guest stared into the middle distance and collected his thoughts before responding.

_‘Steven Rogers was chosen for the experiment by Dr. Erskine nearly thirty years ago. After that he became a public figure but more importantly he became “of interest” to our enemies. James Barnes was captured by the enemy and experimented on. In the eyes of the American public he’s a sidekick or a sidestory of Steve Rogers, but to the enemy he’s an equal because of his strength and healing abilities. It’s not Captain America’s fault that his friend was captured a second time. And it’s certainly not his fault that the enemy launched a hit on him via his old war buddy.’_

_‘Don’t you think that’s what_ the enemy _wants, though? To throw Captain America off by using his old friend against him?’_

 _‘Yes,’_ laughed the second guest. _‘That’s exactly what they wanted to do. They wanted to shake him a little bit.’_

_‘And it worked! He put so many lives—‘_

_‘It didn’t work! We got back a national hero thanks to Steve Rogers. A world war two veteran is getting the mental care he deserves after thirty long years and you people are counting the nonexistent fatalities of the fight that took place. Yes some cars were destroyed and some locals were spooked — and_ one man _gave cover fire. But no one aside from the enemy died,_ and _Steve Rogers recovered his closest friend.’_

_‘Well what if in the future another enemy agents shows up as another friend of Captain America’s? Are we going to sit back and wait for Captain America to coax him into a nursing home or are we going to protect American lives?’_

_‘James Barnes is a full-blooded American. No one died on our side in the process of saving him. Do you think it wasn’t worth it.’_

_‘No one was killed_ this _time. But if we let this go unpunished for Captain America, what will he pull next time or the time after that. We’re teaching him that he can just destroy our city and endanger our citizen’s lives for the sake of his vigilante justice and revenge.’_

 _‘You’re a stupid son of a—‘_ The standby logo came up as the feed cut off. Sam, and the other men in the waiting room, averted their eyes and turned their attentions to whatever magazine was near them

For the most part, the other veterans were on Captain America’s side, a few hated him but you can’t please everyone. That meant that the latest drama surrounding him was on every TV in the VA. Everyone knew someone they met over there that they would die for. Every single man had someone like that. They understood the lengths Captain America went to to save James Barnes. So they all watched the debates in silence, everyone knew the whole room agreed so there was no point in talking about it.

“Sam Wilson,” called the nurse. She was pretty. Her name was Alice Nakahara and every time she saw Sam she batted her lashes and tried to cover her excess fat. A lot of people overlooked her beauty because of that excess fat, and Sam, one of the only people who didn’t, wasn’t interested in her. And yet there she was, batting her lashes and sucking in her gut.

“Dr. Briar’s ready for you,” said Alice with a smile. Sam smiled back but, for once, her eyes left his and focused on something behind him. “Oh…Dr. Briar told me to turn the debates off but…everyone looks really enthralled.”

“Don’t worry about it. If you turned it off in here they’d just go to the activities room to watch,” said Sam. She giggled and let him into the back offices with the key only she held. They felt keys were necessary after, years and years prior, a Korea vet broke in and beat the hell out of three of his doctors. That, Sam thought, was the issue with desk-jockey vets being the doctors. They had no chance of physically restraining the combat-vets that were their patients.

“Good afternoon, Sam,” said Dr. Briar at his office door.

“Afternoon,” replied Sam. He bee-lined for his chair while Dr. Briar closed the door and pulled out his chart. Sam’s eyes caught the glint of the new glass covering Dr. Briar’s degrees. He offered to pay for the new ones considering he was the one who broke them but Dr. Briar insisted.

“So…Any new developments with the Captain America suit?”

Sam shrugged. “Still looks like more people are on his side than against.”

“I hear that’s one of the things that’s angering a lot of people, the implicit trust we have in him.”

“He’s never done us wrong, though. I don’t understand why a few thousand dollars in collateral damages outweighs saving one of the most decorated veterans _ever_.”

“We’re on the same side here, Sam.”

“i know,” laughed Sam, “it’s just been irritating me how obnoxious these assholes get.”

“It’s only been two weeks. It’ll blow over soon enough. So moving on to _you_. I gotta ask again but have you found somewhere to go?”

“Well, Doc,” said Sam proudly, “I _have_.”

Dr. Briar sat up straighter and fought a grin. “Where is it?”

“Bighorn National Forest…or Park. Whatever, it’s a national-something and they need men…and women I guess, for the firewatch positions.”

“What’s a firewatch?”

“It’s a park ranger who’s not really a ranger who just…watches and reports wildfires. It’s a dry season so they’re expecting some this summer. There’re two others who got accepted apparently. But I won’t see them, we live in our own little watchtowers and…it’s pretty isolated and pretty nature-centered. I think it’ll be good for me.”

“Wow. A job and a place to go in one fell swoop. I must say, I’m impressed, Sam.”

“Well—it was Natasha who found it.”

“Who cares who found it, the point is you made plans.”

“Yeah,” said Sam with a barely-there smile. “I guess so…Only catch is it starts in May and runs through August so I’ve got two months before I can go.”

“That’s okay, can’t be helped. And I like that you’ve chosen somewhere this close to nature. I know that living so deep within jungles and so on…Let’s just say I’m dealing with a fear of nature among the other patients since most people in D.C. can easily avoid it. So I’m very proud of you Sam, you’re diving right in.” 

 

 

 

  _‘And now his destructive little husband,’_ the guest laughed at his own mean spirited joke, _‘is getting free mental health care on the American taxpayer’s dime! It’s absolute insanity!’_

 _‘Diane,’_ snapped the other guest on the panel, _‘He’s a WWII veteran. He would and should get that mental health care for free anyway. It’s not because he’s friends with Steve Rogers which, by the way, I think the entire audience at home agrees with me when I say that you continually insinuated that they’re romantically linked is childish and more importantly homophobic.’_

There was a pause that would normally be filled with audience applause, but without an audience it was filled with the anchor, Diane’s, complete stunned silence.

‘ _Well,’_ began Diane, _‘the point here really is that—‘_

_‘That Steve Rogers was faced with a fully armed enemy attack, an enemy attack that used James Barnes to disorient him. Not only did he expertly maneuver the fighting away from the civilians—‘_

_‘He was in the middle of traffic!’_

_‘That’s where the enemy put him but that’s not where Steve Rogers engaged in the fighting! He maneuvered the heat of the fighting away from civilians, produced zero civilian deaths, and rescued one of our best soldiers from communist hands! And yet this show and almost every show like it is insisting that Captain America is a menace for letting his friend fall to communism! Let’s all be clear on this right now! Captain America thought his friend was dead too, he was unaware of his Nazi-recapture and just as surprised as all of us to see him being used by the communists! Yet despite that, he remained calm and protected American citizens. It’s not at all his fault that Barnes was lost to the enemy, but it’s clearly his work that brought him back and yet you fault him over a few dented cars and cracked windows. He’s doing this country a service every day just by existing, he scares away threats, and the ones he doesn’t scare away like Barnes, are neutralized in less than ten minutes. You should be on your knees thanking that man but instead you’re slandering the two of them by tallying up made-up fatalities and overestimating the cost of the damage. You’re a pathetic excuse of a reporter, you’re a joke!’_

Sam was just as speechless as the Diane. She stared at the man speaking, Sam recalled his name being Brian, he was a journalist. Natasha turned the TV up though there was still only silence. Someone on Diane’s production crew signaled to her.

‘ _Ah — Well we’re all out of time. Thank you for coming on the show, Brian,’_ said Diane rather meekly.

 _‘Thank you for having me,’_ said Brian. He began his walk off the soundstage before the cameras stopped rolling. Natasha turned to Sam with wide eyes and a choked laugh.

“Holy shit! He ripped her like five new assholes!”

“Couldn’t’ve said it better myself,” said Sam.

“Too bad he didn’t go on every news show and shut down _every_ anchor. She’s only one,” groaned Natasha.

“Do you think he watches these?” asked Sam.

“Who? Captain America?”

“Yeah, you think he watches these debates?” asked Sam. Natasha poured herself a second bowl of cereal.

“I wouldn’t if it were me…But maybe…he seems kinda masochistic.” She handed him the box of cereal and he poured himself more too. “Did Dr. Briar say anything about your big trek up to Bighorn?”

“Just that he thinks it’s a great idea,” said Sam.

“I told you,” said Natasha. “And I’m glad you finally warmed up. I’m gonna buy you a camera so you can take pictures of your view from the tower. I’ve always wanted to spend a few nights in a park like that.”

“Nothing’s stopping you, Nat. Just go camping,” laughed Sam.

“Firewatchers get to stay in a furnished little tower, campers sleep on the ground and have to avoid bears. But let me know if you’re allowed to bring friends over.”

 

 

 

“You got your…water bottle…and your…flashlights…and your—oh well I guess you don’t really need a firestarter, your whole job is to fire-stop,” laughed Sam’s dad. He always laughed too hard at his own jokes.

“I came by to get a pot, they said I might need a pot,” said Sam.

“I know I know…just makin’ sure you packed everything right.”

Sam watched his dad thumb through every inch of his packing for the next five minutes before it was deemed up to par and he was gifted an old cooking pot.

“Shouldn’t you bring some food to get you started?”

“I thought I’d buy it when I got to Wyoming. It’s a long drive, I don’t wanna worry about food spoiling.”

“Well wieners never spoil, take a couple packets of weenies,” said his dad.

“Please call them hotdogs like normal people,” insisted Sam.

“What sounds better, Samuel, a ‘hot dog roast’ or a _‘weenie_ roast’? Hm?”

Sam sighed. “A weenie roast.”

“Alright, I’ll go inside and get you some _weenies_.” His father disappeared into the house. Sam was close to him, a lot closer now than he had been growing up. His father worked too often for Sam to really bond with him until he got a little older and understood him a little better. He emerged from the house with four packets of hotdogs. “Here’re the weenies!”

“Thanks, Dad,” said Sam.

“If nothin’ else they’ll be a good car snack once you really get going,” said his dad.

“Raw hotdogs?”

“Those weenies aren’t _raw_ , they’re pre-cooked. You only roast ‘em to give the illusion that they haven’t already been boiled.”

“What about the ‘illusion’ of flavor,” teased Sam.

“When I was a kid we’d be grateful to have a flavorless uncooked weenie,” said his father. “Now let me check make sure your tires are up to snuff. No son ‘a mine is gonna die on account of a flat.”

He had always been overprotective, never overbearing but definitely overprotective. It was hell for him when Sam was deployed and he could do nothing to keep him safe but pray. Sam sent him letters every day to let him know, remind him, that he was alive and that he was going to make it.

“Dad, you already checked the tires last week, they’re still fine.”

“What if your dumbass ran over a nail or something? You’re already out there fighting wars with Catherine America, I can’t expect you to drive safely.”

Sam rolled his eyes and let his father check the air pressure in all four tires. There was a lot of understanding between them in regards to Riley. Sam’s father wasn’t blind and Sam wasn’t always very covert in his mostly-lonely youth. When Sam started writing home about how great his partner was, well, there wasn’t much left to say. Though sometimes Sam wished one of them would. It occurred to him that the best time to air some of this out was the day before he was supposed to drive across the country and hide in the woods for three months.

“Hey Dad,” began Sam. “Ya know…” he trailed off.

“How’s that doctor workin’ for you down at the VA?” asked his dad, it was unclear whether or not he’d heard Sam’s attempt at conversation.

“He’s workin’ out fine. He’s really helped me get through a lot of it…and Riley,” said Sam. His father, halfway under his car, paused for a moment before continuing to tinker.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah…Ever since he died I’ve been runnin’ like crazy—You remember.”

“I remember, sure.”

“Well he says its because ‘a Riley, says they’re linked and I don’t do that anymore. Don’t wake up in the middle of the night to run around half of D.C.,” said Sam. It was hot enough that his nervous sweating could be disguised as regular sweating.

“That’s good!” said his dad, still under the car. “Ya know when you told me about moving out to Bighorn for a summer I thought he was a quack but this…this could really help you—and if he’s stopped your running then he must be a damn good therapist.”

“Yeah, he is,” said Sam. “Riley…” said Sam with no real aim. He wanted to get his name back in the conversation but had no way to link him back in.

“I wish I could’ve met him,” said his dad. Sam froze. “You always spoke so highly of him…Shame I never—well it’s far more than just a shame…I do wish I could’ve spoken to him.”

“He wished that too, Dad,” said Sam. They’d spoken about Riley a few times. Short conversations that always ended uncomfortably. He’d never once made any indication that he knew, though he did, or that he cared who he was.

“Jesus, kid, this car is older than me! I’ll be surprised if this shit show makes it out of the city.” His dad laughed and wriggled back out from under the car.

“It’s only five years old!”

“It looks like it’s 80,” said his dad. The two of them lingered on each other for a few seconds before his father broke the eye contact and wrung his hands. “So you got the…cooking pot and the wieners.”

“Yeah, got ‘em both. Anything else you think I’ll need out there?”

“Just stay safe, Samuel.”

“I will,” replied Sam. His father pulled him into a tight, tight hug.

“I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll miss you too,” said Sam. He pulled away from Sam and handed him back his carkeys.

“Well go on, get on the road,” said his dad with a forced laugh. “And drive safe!”

Sam opened the driver’s side door. “I will, Dad. Love you,”

“Love you too — If a fire does break out, Sammy, you hightail it outta there! I don’t give a shit if Smokey the Bear himself tells ya to stay and help evacuate or whatever the hell you guys have to do! You see a fire, you _leave_!”

“Alright, Dad!” said Sam. “I’ll see you back in August.”

“Alright…Love you.”

Sam put the car in gear and drove off. His father waved and grew smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror until he finally disappeared when Sam turned a corner. Sam’s father had trouble with goodbyes these days. He’d gotten a lot better but the months immediately following his return from war, anytime Sam had to leave his father’s house to go home it was painful. Saying goodbye to Sam for three months couldn’t have been easy for him.

 

 

 

“You _can so_ eat wieners raw!” said Natasha.

“Call them _hotdogs_!” shouted Sam.

“If you tell me to call them hotdogs _one more time_ , I’m gonna start callin’ em dicks! Is that what you want, Sam?! Is that what you want?!”

Sam stopped a laugh and rolled his eyes. “Anyway, can you check in on my dad occasionally? I don’t want him getting too lonely with me gone.”

“Sam, I have dinner with your dad every weekend anyway, I think I can handle bothering him more often.”

“Since when do you two go on dates?”

“Since…” began Natasha. She didn’t want to finish the sentence and Sam already knew the end. ’Since you went to war’.

“Thanks, then, Nat. I really appreciate it.”

“I’m already watering all your stupid cacti I might as well teach your dad what _good_ rock and roll is.”

“Don’t kill my dad for the sake of one of your Cream albums.”

“I think he’s warming up to ‘em.”

“I think not.”

Natasha threw in a pad of paper ontop of his other luggage. “No excuse not to write us,” said Natasha. Her voice wiggled.

“Are we gonna be weepy?” teased Sam. “Is this gonna be a weepy goodbye?”

“Yes,” said Natasha holding back tears. Sam wrapped his arms tight around her, she hugged back tighter still. “You promise me, Wilson, promise me you’re gonna write.”

Sam couldn’t help but notice how identical those words were to the goodbye they gave eachother when Sam was shipped out. “Nat, I’’ll write you every night. And I’ll take plenty of pictures.”

“If you don’t, I’ll fly out there and move into that little tower with you.”

“It’ll be okay, Nat. I’m going on vacation remember. It’s a vacation.”

Natasha pulled herself off of his chest and shook herself out. “You’re right, you’re right. It’s just…it’s just a vacation that you’re _definitely_ gonna come back from.”

“Right.”

“Right…Be careful out there.”

“I will. Be careful back here.”

“I will…I love you, Sam.”

“Love you too, Nat.”

Natasha rubbed her eyes out and groaned. “Get in the fuckin’ car and go so I can cry already.”

Sam kissed her head. “I’ll see you soon.”

 

 

 

_‘Steven Grant Rogers, otherwise known as Captain America, is MIA along with his close friend James Barnes. For those who don’t know, Barnes met the physical requirements required for the formula given to Captain America but was passed over in favor of his childhood friend. However, once captured by Hydra, he was injected with a similar serum. Since then he has been unfrozen but unaging, much like Rogers. According to the statement released by Rogers two weeks ago, Barnes has been under severe brainwashing by Hydra and the communists. He says this to explain a violent attack launched by Barnes nearly five months ago in Washington D.C.. He has also stated that Barnes has been in intensive therapy since the incident and is, for all intents and purposes, deprogrammed._

_The pair have been missing since three days ago. They are not under surveillance or any form of watch so they cannot be classified as missing legally. However they are suspiciously absent from their shared home in Washington D.C..’_

“Cause you fuckers won’t leave ‘em alone,” muttered Sam.

_‘John Sutherland weighs in.’_

_‘Well I think that the only explanation for this is that Rogers knows that Barnes isn’t adjusting and is trying to hide him essentially. He doesn’t want the American public seeing that this close friend of his is beyond repair, and most importantly, he’s still dangerous. So, personally I believe he’s trying to hide him. Rogers has been known to take frequent trips back to New York, where he’s originally from but has only done so once with Barnes. Perhaps the memories of New York, or maybe the change the city has undergone since their childhoods, was too much for Barnes and he snapped. I mean there’s really no telling what happened, especially since now we can’t find him.’_

Sam switched the radio to music and turned it down just a little. According to the phone call he got telling him he was officially hired and ‘part of the team’, he was supposed to drive his car into the ‘faculty lot’ nearest his tower. Leave it there and hike the rest of the way to his new home. Sam’s tires screamed and whined as he forced them over the uneven terrain, further and further into the brush and the grass until he found another car.

The lot looked more like a clearing. The only other car was a pickup. He pulled next to the pickup and took everything out of Louis. The hike was supposedly an hour or two but with the sun setting and Sam's sense of direction not getting any better, it was going to take more than that. Sam strapped his backpack on and grabbed the one box of clothes and miscellaneous he had. The sun was lower than he would’ve liked so the first leg of his hike was a brisk walk. He couldn’t run out of steam, he’d been training like a dedicated runner for the last two years. But even he couldn’t beat the sun.

It set without his permission. He was forced to make camp. That was in the half-hearted employee welcome handbook. It was more a pamphlet than a book because its only instructions were how to locate the tower. In said handbook they gave instructions for making camp. Sam had made camp for two and a half years straight, he didn’t need the pamphlet to guide him.

The pamphlet gave instructions for a campfire. Sam knew better than to light a fire, create a beacon for the Vietcong to snipe him from miles away. He laid out under the stars and was completely inundated by the war. Memories of every mission of his flooded back. The stars looked just the same in the Vietnamese sky. For the first time in a long time, he panicked. There was no one for him to grab on to, no Natasha to cradle him, no dad to make him middle of the night meals. He just had to ride it out, had to stare into the pits of the Vietnamese sky. It was so tranquil yet so menacing. As if it was asserting it’s dominance, screaming right in Sam’s ear and saying no matter how far away he ran the sky would always be right there every night, waiting.


	3. Chapter 3

 

 

 

Waking up was worse than trying to fall asleep. Bighorn, or at least the clearing he was in, had an overall beige tone. Something Vietnam was known for. His eyes opened thirty minutes after sunrise and his heart nearly leapt from his chest. It had done that every morning in Vietnam and this morning was no different.

Just like when he was back there, he sat up straight and checked his surroundings, unsure if it was real. For the first time since he was deployed, it wasn’t real. He wasn’t in a warzone and he wasn’t a sitting duck. At least not for the Vietcong. Crying in relief would cut into his clean up time too much so he skipped it.

He wrapped his sleeping bag up, pissed out the fire, and continued his day-long hike up to his watchtower. Before he got his wings, two long years of his war was spent on the ground, humping across field after field with a hundred pounds of useless shit strapped to him. This felt like that. So much so that he kept looking ahead for his CO.

Enjoying the natural beauty that surrounded him was the last thing on his todo list. He watched the ground in front of him for mines and their tripwires, and ignored everything left or right. Though he knew he was in Bighorn not Vietnam, he couldn’t help but feel exposed without someone on his six. The last man to be tailing the troop, Clarkson, got shot right through his fucking helmet. After that, it was Sam’s job to watch everyone else’s backs. Before he got shot through the helmet too, he was put in the air.

Clarkson walked behind him for six months before he got got. And when he did he hummed the tune to an old commercial selling either bathroom cleaner or medicine. Sam never heard the name of the product just the tune of the jingle. As he humped across the Bighorn National Park, that tune got stuck in his head and came out his mouth.

 

 

 

The sun was minutes from setting when Sam arrived at the watchtower. It was just as gorgeous as he’d been picturing his entire hike. He ran up the five flights of stairs wrapping around the perfectly square tower. At the top, a note was tacked to the door.

‘KEY UNDER MAT, MORE INSTRUCTIONS INSIDE’

Sam rolled his eyes. As if they couldn’t have been more obvious. Thankfully the key was still under the mat where the other rangers had left it. He shoved the door open and let himself in.

It was one room. Windows wrapped around the entire thing, it was a watchtower after all. A bed was against one wall along with a desk. The opposite wall had a small kitchen in the corner, and in the other corner was an even smaller dresser. Right in the middle of the room was a map table. The map of the park was laid out across it with random pencil and pen markings written in points of interest.

“He’s here,” sang a staticky voice. Sam jumped and dropped the box he was holding. “Steve, wake up, he made it.”

“Hello?!” said Sam.

“Shit what frequency are we on—Steve wake up!” said the same staticky voice.

Sam dropped the box he was hold and began scouring the tiny room in search for the source of the voice. He found nothing but was suddenly aware of how exposed the windows made him. There was no way to take cover or hide, every side of the damn room was open.

“Uh hey, new guy, check your desk. The writing desk not the map table. There should be a radio on it somewhere, hopefully it’s charging. And uh…just press the only button on there to talk,” said the voice.

Sam wandered to the desk and found the charging radio. He felt stupid for getting so worked up but being aware that there was no threat didn’t take the edge off. He pressed the black button in the center of the orange radio.

“Hello?…Over?” said Sam.

“Hello,” replied the voice. “Over.”

“Who are—Where are you? Over,” said Sam.

“I’m one of the other firewatchers this summer. I’m in the south tower, you’re in the north and my…the third guy, Steve, he’s in the west tower…Oh, yeah—over.”

“How’d you know I got here? Over,” said Sam.

“There should be a telescope in your room. Technically it’s for spotting fires or whatever but I’ve been using it to stake out your tower all fuckin’ day, over,” said the voice. Sam checked over both shoulders on instinct. He, slowly, walked towards the south-facing window. The south tower was just barely visible. He waved. “Haha! I saw that!”

“You’re just…watchin’ me? Over?” said Sam.

“You can watch me back,” replied the voice. “The other rangers gave me and Steve the job of filling you in so I didn’t want you rambling around there for hours before I checked in. Apparently the other rangers have bigger, more on-fire fish to fry in the opposite end of the park. Over.”

“Oh…Well…thanks then,” said Sam. “So what else do I need to be filled in on? Over.”

“Right, okay. I’m gonna skip the manual ‘cause it’s fuckin’ stupid and long. Basically, we watch out for fires. If we see fires or fire-activity, we use these radios to report it to each other firstly and then we switch frequencies and report to the head ranger. Then they take care of the actual work. But, to keep us from losing our minds, we’re also in charge of patrolling a 25 miles radius around out towers. They overlap a little in the center so we can take turns patrolling there. Or, ya know, meet up for a picnic or whatever,” laughed the voice. There was a pause. “Oh, sorry—Over.”

“So what do we do when we patrol? Over.”

“We just make sure no visitors are like killing bears or littering or shit like that. It’s not hard and you get to hike which is fun. If you like that kinda thing…But I guess if you didn’t like that kinda thing you wouldn’t have signed up for this. Over.”

“I’m Sam, by the way,” said Sam. “Over.”

“Sam. Strong name,” said the voice. “I knew a Sam back in grammar school. He kissed my sister and my older brother beat the shit outta him and he broke his arm. Can you believe that? He actually broke a kid’s arm. ‘Course nowadays that ends in lawsuits and shit but back then it just made my brother cool. Over.”

“Wait—how old are you?” asked Sam. “Over.”

“Oh I’m…27,” said the voice with too much hesitation.

“Why do you sound so unsure about that? Over.”

“It’s a long story, over.”

“Lost your birth certificate or something? Over,” speculated Sam.

“Somethin’ like that…What about you? How old? Over.”

“22,” said Sam. “Comin’ up on 23. Over.”

“Oh…you look…I mean I guess you do look young I just thought you seemed so…You walk like an older man,” said the voice. “Over.”

“I don’t know how to take that,” laughed Sam. “Over.”

“You don’t have to take it any kinda way, I’m just noticin’ shit,” said the voice. “Over.”

“Where’re you from?” asked Sam, the voice’s accent was too thick to go unmentioned. “Over.”

“Brooklyn, born and raised. Over.”

“But like old-ass Brooklyn,” laughed Sam. “You sound like a 60 year old Brooklynite, not 27. Over.”

“I guess I’m an old soul,” said the voice. “Over.”

“Or you’re lying about your age. And when an older man lies about his age it’s always something sinister. Over,” said Sam, only half-joking.

“I can’t prove it, but I am 27. Over.” said the voice.

“Mhm,” said Sam. “Oh wait you never gave me your name. Over.”

“Bucky,” replied the voice. “Over.”

“Your name’s Bucky? Are you sure you’re not 60? Over,” laughed Sam.

“Do you wanna carbon date me? Over,” teased Bucky.

“Next I see ya, I’m countin’ your rings. Over.”

“Yeah yeah. You should get some sleep. You’ve got more ground to cover tomorrow and you need to rest. Put the radio back to charge, stay on this frequency and hopefully, tomorrow, Steve’ll be awake to greet you. Over.”

“Okay. You gonna watch me sleep with that telescope? Over.”

“Goodnight, Sam. Over.”

“Night.”

Sam put the radio back in its dock to charge. There were fresh sheets folded and waiting for him on the bare mattress. He made his bed. When it came time to peel out of his clothes he became hyperaware that Bucky might be watching and developed a gymnastic routine to avoid being seen by him.

 

 

 

“Bucky! Bucky! Bucky wake up! Did you steal _my_ shirt that said Rogers on the back! Did you steal it! You know it’s my favorite shirt to sleep in and I can’t find it! Bucky!” screamed Sam’s radio. He sat up, the ass crack of dawn glowing through the windows would’ve woken him if the screaming hadn’t. “I swear to God and Jesus if you steal any more of my clothes I’m going to get you so fat that you won’t be able to wear any of them ever again!”

“Oh yeah?! I’ll just keep wearin’ ‘em as Daisy Dukes and crop tops and stretch ‘em _all_ out!” replied Bucky.

“I’m gonna steal those stupid sweatpants you live in and see how you like it!”

“I’m wearin’ ‘em _right now_! So good fuckin’ luck prying the cold dead sweatpants off my bare ass!”

Sam cocked his head and wondered briefly is this was an actual argument actually happening over the official firewatch frequency.

“The only reason I’m not running down there right now to steal your pants is because I am too good a person to let you run around Bighorn with your dick out—“

“Oh you’re such a big man, Steve! You know damn well it would take zero convincing for me to run around this park with my dick out! You’re just using that as an excuse because you know you can’t get these pants from me!”

“I hope those pants magically seal themselves to you and you never escape them!”

“They already have!”

Sam, very reluctantly, picked up his radio. “Um…Hello? Over.”

“Oh…did you hear that?” asked Bucky. “Over.”

“Kinda hard not to,” laughed Sam. “Over.”

“Fantastic. I’m gonna shower off, Steve introduce yourself. Over and out.”

“Alright…hi…”

Sam waited for a few beats before chiming in. “You’re supposed to say ‘over’, over.”

“Oh, sorry. Buck and I stopped saying that…Over.”

“Why? Or how? Over.”

“When the other person lets go of the button there’s a little click. Here listen. Over.” There was a slight static click.

“Good. Over’s starting not to sound like a word,” laughed Sam.

“I’m Steve by the way,” said Steve.

“I heard. I met—well not really—but I talked to Bucky last night. He said you’re in the west tower.”

“He’s right,” said Steve. “Did he tell you everything about your duties here and all that?”

Sam swung his legs out of his bed and stood to stretch all the way out. “He told me I check for fires, report them, and patrol the radius.”

“Yep, that’s about it.”

“For three months straight.”

“For three months straight,” repeated Steve. “Also, the shower is directly below you on the ground by the water tank.”

“That was my next question, thanks. I’m Sam by the way.”

“Sam…Ya know I knew a Sam in grammar school, he kissed a friend of mine’s sister—“

“I heard this story from Bucky actually.”

“Oh. We grew up together so most of our stories are the same,” said Steve.

“…How old are you?”

“Why?”

“Just curious,” said Sam.

“Uh…well then I’m somewhere between 26 and 31,” said Steve.

“That’s…not an age,” said Sam with a frustrated laugh.

“It’s close enough.”

“Alright, whatever. I’m gonna shower.”

 

 

 

The shower reminded him of ‘nam too. He was stripped naked in the middle of nowhere with unnaturally warm water flowing at a pace much too slow to actually bathe beneath. But at least back there, the other soldiers made sure he was safe. In Bighorn there was no one with him to warn him or cover him. Of course that was the whole point of him being there. He had to learn, to know that he didn’t need safety anymore. No Vietcong were going to jump out and get him through the helmet in Bighorn, or anywhere else for that matter. So he showered through the fear.

He dressed and packed his hiking backpack and locked the door on his way out.

“Follow the path and you’ll hit a little help station,” said Steve.

“Fuck—Steve, did you take those socks—the ones with the little maple leafs on ‘em. You know I like those ones Steve,” said Bucky.

“I didn’t take your fuckin’ socks, you freak. Anyway, Sam. The help stations don’t look like much, they’ve just got like a little locked crate and a ‘you are here’ map posted.”

“I see it,” said Sam. “What do I do with it?”

“Unlock it and there should be a ranger’s map in it so you won’t get lost. And a compass too hopefully.”

Sam bent down and checked the lock. “Okay I need a four letter word.”

“I think it’s ‘park’,” said Bucky. Sam tried it and the lock clicked open. It was like the rangers wanted to be robbed. The lid was stiff but Sam forced it open and found the map and compass Steve had promised.

“I got ‘em.”

“Great so, the three of us are like a huge venn diagram. We’ll take turns watching over the areas we share.”

“I already told him that,” said Bucky. “For today though, just get your feet wet. It’s kinda cool out here—and in the area we all three share there’s a lake. You can swim in it, it’s not cold.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” said Sam. “By the way, how’d two old as shit Brooklyn natives find out about a job way the hell out here?”

“My…eh…doctor recommended it,” said Bucky.

“No shit—My therapist told me to come here too,” said Sam.

“Yeah—Yeah my therapist—it was my therapist!” said Bucky. Being 60 years old, Sam could tell it was difficult for him to admit he was seeing a therapist so he wasn’t surprised by how excited Bucky was when Sam mentioned it first.

“And what about you Steve?” asked Sam. The hill he was climbing had a low incline and required very little focus. And yet his eyes stayed glued to the paces in front of him, waiting to see a trip wire.

“Oh…I just didn’t want him out here all alone—and his therapist said it was good for us to stay together so I came with. Thought it might be nice to get away from the city for awhile too. So far, it is."

Sam froze and stared at the leaves, twigs, and needles surrounding his foot. Something about the configuration of what he stepped on looked ominous and lifting his foot meant setting it off. Bighorn or Vietnam, nationality didn’t matter to buried mines and their trip wires.

“But, I mean, it’s hard not to like it out here. It’s so pretty and so expansive. Makes you feel small in the good way,” said Steve. Sam, slowly but surely lifted his foot off the pine needles and leaves.

“Yeah…” slurred Sam. His eyes returned to watching his every step. “Yeah I don’t know if you heard but Captain America sorta caused a ruckus in the city I’m from.”

“Oh…did he?” said Bucky.

“Every local radio show and news station won’t stop bitchin’ about it. An’ my therapist wanted me to get outta town for awhile anyway but I was kinda…involved in the ruckus he caused and so I think after that he really wanted to get me away from all the vitriol that those dumbass news anchors keep spewing,” said Sam.

“Involved how?” asked Steve.

“What kinda vitriol?” asked Bucky.

“Ya know they start sayin’ Cap’s not worthy of the title, he’s secretly a communist and working with the Russians, he—his old war buddy was in this ruckus—said he’s the one that turned him onto communism, he endangered civilians and all this shit. None of it’s true but people eat it up.”

“Well…glad we’re on the same side of this issue,” said Steve.

“I think most people are on his side. It’s just news anchors lookin’ for a story that try and ruffle feathers,” said Sam.

“I’m tuning out for a second,” said Steve. “I’m goin’ swimming.”

“Oh—I’m tuning out too,” said Bucky and the frequencies went dead.

 

 

 

Sam stopped occasionally on his rounds to really look at the scenery. He could only do so when stopped, he wouldn’t risk taking steps without having eyes on where his boots were going to land.

And it was gorgeous. Similar to Vietnam in the ratio of green to dirt-colored, but different in the type of trees, the type of grass, the type of cliffs and hillsides. It was a similar feeling but completely different visual. A visual he could actually enjoy without checking over his shoulder and getting a rock in his stomach.

Around lunch, he ate some of the raw hotdogs his dad gave him. He expected them to taste like shit since they hadn’t been roasted, but they tasted just like a regular hotdog. His dad was right, yet again, the roasting of a hotdog was just for show. He took small bites from the hotdog and dangled his legs over a short cliffside. Short enough that he could jump it but tall enough that he could pretend he was miles from the ground.

“Fuck,” came Bucky’s voice, but it clicked out quickly. Then back in. “the towel.”

“I’ve got somethin’ better than a towel,” said Steve.

“Oh yeah?” said Bucky. The line went dead again. Sam filed that away and kept it in his back pocket. He’d ask about it later if he ever found the energy to care. It was strange, though, that they felt the need to lie about going swimming together.

 

 

 

 

_May 29th, 1977_

_Dear Natasha,_

_I made it and I’m doing just fine. It’s nice here too, lots of nature and plants. All that good stuff. The two guys that are firewatching with me seem cool. It’s only been two days but they’ve been really friendly so far. They knew each other since birth though so I think I might be getting excluded from a few things. I don’t think it’s anything sinister (least I hope not haha) they just seem like weird old guys. I’m taking the polaroid with me tomorrow. This place is really photogenic and I’m required to hike daily so don’t worry about me getting enough pictures, but you might need to send me more film! The guys here said the mail gets picked up every three days so I don’t know how long it’ll take for this to get back to you. Let me know if anything interesting happens or if they find Captain America while I’m gone. I have a feeling I won’t be getting much news while I’m out here. Miss you already._

_Love,  
_ _Sam_

 

 

 

_May 29th, 1977_

_Dear Dad,_

_It’s all good over here. It’s really scenic, we should do a camping trip up here sometime. Deep hills, huge valleys. And part of my job is patrolling the area so I’m required by contract to see every inch of it. I’m gonna send Nat some pictures so make sure you ask to see them. I’m watching with two other guys (that’s what all the cool kids call being a firewatch, “watching”). I haven’t ever seen them since we’re stationed so far apart from each other but they’re kind of weird in a good way. I guess you have to be kind of weird to take a job like this. Anyway, I wanted to say, you were right about the_ _~~hotdogs~~ _ _weenies, they taste the same right out of the package. I miss you. I’ll try and find you a cool souvenir, I’ve got plenty of time to shop._

_Love,  
Samuel_

 

“Who’re you writing?” asked Bucky over the radio. Sam had already tuned out and set the radio to charge before he began writing. 

“Stop spying on me, you freak,” spat Sam. 

“Well if you won’t talk to me I’m gonna spy, it’s only fair.”

“How is that fair?”

“Steve’s always been an early bird and I’m a night owl. I _thought_ it would be nice to have someone on my side.”

“I’ll talk to you if you stop spying.”

“Fine. But who were you writing to?” asked Bucky.

“A friend and my dad. Why do you care?”

“Thought it was kinda weird.”

“To write letters?”

“People that take a job like this — especially someone who drives halfway across the country to take a job like this—usually doesn’t have someone to write home to,” said Bucky.

“You and Steve are out here.”

“And the only people we’d write to is each other,” laughed Bucky. 

“Guess I’m just more well adjusted,” said Sam.

“That’s not sayin’ much…Look to your right and there’re envelopes,” said Bucky.

“I’ll start putting up curtains, I don’t care if it’s against the fire code or whatever,” snapped Sam.

“So what do your letters say? Nothing’s really happened up here. Not yet anyway,” said Bucky.

“I’m just checking in and letting them know I got here in one piece.” Sam sealed both letters in their own envelopes and carefully addressed them both. Bucky walked him through what the return address was. 

“Are they a worrisome pair?”

“What?”

“They overprotective or something? Why do you need to check in?”

“Yeah I guess they’re a little overprotective these days. It’s polite to check in anyway. I know you’re like 50 or something so you probably don’t even have parents to check in with so you don’t understand.”

“My parents actually are still alive,” said Bucky. “My dad is anyway. We never got along.”

“Oh. Sorry to hear that. My dad and I are close but I guess that could be because I’m an only child. You said you had a few siblings.”

“That’s not it. But he did always prefer my brothers to me. They’re all in their mid and late sixties now. My little sister’s fifty five. Can you believe that?”

“So you _are_ in your fifties? Or even sixties?” 

“In a way, I guess.”

“What about Steve?”

“He’s the year younger than me,” said Bucky. Sam pinched the bridge of his nose. He still wasn’t getting a straight answer. 

“So you’re both about 60?”

“Why’re you so preoccupied with age?”

“What year were you born?!” screamed Sam.

“1917, Steve was 1918.” Sam heard Bucky suppress a giggle.

“So? You’re like 60 and 61?!” 

“Well mathematically yes but physically I think I’m about 25, Steve can’t be a day over 24.”

“Fuck it, I’m going to sleep. Goodnight Bucky.”

“Night, Sam.”

 

 

 

“Hey! Buck! Sam!” screamed Steve over the radios. “We've got company in your shared quadrant!”

“What?” grumbled Bucky into the radio. Sam stretched across his bed and reached for his radio. The sun hadn’t breached the horizon but it was no more than an hour away from doing so. 

“There’s a campfire going in your and Sam’s shared quadrant. One of you two has to go and check,” said Steve.

“Why the hell are you awake?” 

“I don’t know, I just am—Go check it out before they burn something down!”

“Alright Sam, how do we settle this?” said Bucky.

“Are you fuckin’ kidding me? If someone as dark as me wanders into a white man’s campsite in the middle of the night I’m just gonna get shot!” spat Sam.

“I’ll meet you there then.”

Sam groaned, pulled pants and shoes on, grabbed his backpack and radio, and headed out. Steve, with his telescope and infinite wisdom, guided them via radio to the fire. 

“Okay, Bucky’s there,” said Steve.

“Can I turn back?” asked Sam.

“No, go just in case they’re drunk or something,” said Steve. 

Sam continued the trek. He was tired and grumpy and every dark step he took put him on edge. Back in the war he’d had to hump miles in the dark to avoid being seen and those were leaps and bounds more terrifying than day-walking. Every step could be his last and no matter how wide he opened his eyes the ground was still invisible. The Bighorn darkness equally matched the Vietnamese darkness in magnitude and intensity. Sam’s shaking hand wouldn’t use the flashlight or risk alerting the Vietcong. 

Then the fire appeared. Ahead in the clearing. He hurried towards it.

“Alright, goodnight folks,” said Bucky’s voice in the distance. It was the first Sam had ever heard it not over the cheap radioes. It was just barely audible but clearly Bucky. His clumsy feet led him closer and closer to the fire, more in search of Bucky than the campers. 

He found only campers. They looked just as surprised to see him as he was to find no Bucky. “Where’s the other guy?”

“Other guy?” said the woman pouring a coffee pot out over the fire. “Oh he’s just up that way.” She pointed up the gradual hill that began behind them.

“Sam, is that you?” said Bucky’s voice over the radio. Sam reached for his own and tried to focus his eyes on anything in the darkness.

“Where’re you?”

“Up here, look I’ll wave,” said Bucky. Sam’s eyes found him immediately after that. Bucky was a good hundred feet away, already on his trek back to his tower. Bucky shone his flashlight on his own face and grinned. It was difficult to get a sense of what he looked like from such a long-distance and blurred out view. But what did catch his eye was his arm glinting in the flashlight’s beam.

“Why’s? Why’s your arm so shiny?” asked Sam into the radio. Bucky’s waving stopped and the flashlight turned off. 

“I oil it up every night,” said Bucky.

“What?”

“Keeps me from gettin’ wrinkly,” said Bucky. “Let’s go back to bed.” His silhouette against the teasing of the morning grew fainter. Sam turned away from the camp and headed back to his own tower.

 

 

 

“Why did you lie about your arm?” said Steve’s voice. Sam’s eyes fluttered open and early-morning flooded his room.

“I don’t know…” trailed Bucky’s voice.

“You’re not embarrassed by it are you?” asked Steve. 

“I’m not embarrassed it’s just…such a conversation. A conversation I don’t really ever wanna have,” said Bucky. 

“You know you’re…I mean you’re still…This feels weird saying it over a radio but you know what I wanna say,” said Steve with a laugh.

“Yeah, I know…”

Sam had been curious about his arm since the night before and overhearing that conversation had him speculating beyond the realm of reason. He needed to just see what was up with his damn arm. Since Bucky had been peeping on him for the last four days it was only fair that he got to do it back to him. He stood and stretched and made his way across the room to his telescope to maneuver it to the other side of the tower.

“Oh! Sam’s awake!” said Bucky over the radio. Sam sighed and hurried to respond. 

“STOP SPYING ON ME!” 

“That was the last time, I swear,” said Bucky. 

“Today’s mail day,” said Steve. “According to this, we each pick up our food and other supplies, along with our mail, at our designated ‘ranger stations’, whatever the hell those are. Looks like we’ve all got different ones too.”

“Ranger station must be those lockboxes that are everywhere. I remember the orientation lady saying that,” said Bucky.

“Why’d you two get orientation and not me?”

“When you show up two days late it tends to happen,” said Steve.

“Whatever, I’m gonna go get my mail.”

 

 

 

 

June 7th, 1977

Dear Sam,

I got your dad hooked on The Doors, we’re getting places. I’m glad to hear you like it there so far. I’m a little concerned that you said your other watch partners aren’t including you. If it’s something other than them being weird old recluses then I wanna help. I know you can’t do it from there so do you want me to report them or something? I don’t know how to help you so please, let me know what I can do. Your dad’s doing just fine, so you know. He’s keeping tabs on the bushfires moving through Bighorn but other than that he’s fine. I can’t wait to get some of those pictures. I’m dying to take a vacation somewhere like that. But, speaking of, how is it over there? Is it too similar to Vietnam or is it okay? If you need anything at all, let me know. I miss you dearly and it’s only been a week and a half.

Love,  
Natasha

 

 

 

June 6th, 1977

Samuel,

I told you so. Weenies are just fine fresh out the package. I wish I would’ve put some money up before you proved me right. I can tell you told Natasha to keep me company. She’s helping me clear out the attic. According to her I need to reorganize. Don’t worry, she knows better than to even go near Mama’s things. I may or may not have shown her some of your baby pictures and she might have gotten copies so if you see those pinned up in her apartment…well…. I’ve been tracking some of the bushfires in the other half of the forest. They spread so quickly, I hear they move at almost 40 miles an hour, can you believe that? Remember what I said, Samuel. Smokey the Bear himself could tell you to stand your ground but I am your father and I say at the first sign of smoke you head back to D.C. where the only fires are in hearths. I hope that forest is treating you well. I know when I got back from Korea the last damn place I wanted to see was dry forests so I’m really proud of you for doing this. I hope it helps and if it doesn’t call me and I’ll come pick you up. Or write me I guess.

Yours truly,  
Dad

 

“Get anything good?” asked Steve.

“Some letters from home. They were sent about five days ago, takes a while to get our mail huh?”

“That’s nothin’,” said Bucky, “back in the war we waited months upon months for our mail to be sent and a few more months to get a response. Sometimes the censor blacked out so much of your heartfelt sentiment that the response you got back was just a long line of question marks.”

“Yeah, I remember,” said Sam with a grin that felt out of place. “I once got a strange letter from a friend of mine. She said something about feeling sick or—I can’t remember her exact words. But I asked if she was pregnant, ya know as a joke. And she wrote me back and said ‘if I were pregnant, I’d’ve had the baby by the time you read this’.”

“You’re a vet?” asked Steve.

“Unfortunately,” said Sam. “I was an airman—well first I was field artillery until someone higher up got me into this WINGS program.”

“Wings?” asked Bucky.

“I don’t remember what it stood for but it was that guy—Howard Stark founded it. Howard Hughes apparently helped with some war plane and to one-up him Stark made these wing-suits. They looked like bird wings almost. And you could fly missions a lot easier with ‘em.”

“I think I heard of that department somewhere,” said Bucky. “Oh yeah! I saw a—I saw a pamphlet about it at the VA. It said ’The wind beneath my WINGS’. I never read it but I have heard of it."

“That was me, yeah. I think it was only about fifty guys in ‘em. But I never met most of ‘em. You flew with just your partner and only ever your partner and when you were grounded you stayed with your partner and your troop—technically we still belonged to our troop we were just ‘on loan’ to WINGS.”

“How did you stay with your partner _and_ your troop? We’re you all part of the same troop?” asked Steve.

“No—and actually…I guess most men didn’t stay with their partners. I did though because my partner came from the air force which was very rare for WINGS and his troop was way the hell away from the front,” said Sam. As he spoke his fingers traced the face of Riley in an old polaroid he took with him everywhere, including to Bighorn.

“Why would air force men be uncommon in WINGS?”

“They wanted ground troops in the air. Thought that the guys in the sky didn’t understand the gravity of the war and that we’d be a welcome change. Riley was the exception, he was just too damn good of a pilot.”

“Was?” said Bucky.

There was a silence. Sam let it sit. His heart still sank, his stomach still churned, and his eyes still welled when it hit him. That Riley really was dead and his body was lost somewhere to some commie jungle. Rotting alone and cold, or worse, found by Vietcong who’d do God knows what to him.

“I think I’m gonna turn in for the night,” said Sam.

“Okay, night Sam,” replied Steve.


	4. Chapter 4

 

 

Two weeks made no difference in how Sam walked. His eyes always focused on where his foot was about to land. He only ever looked up to snap pictures for Natasha or to, ya know, check for fires. He was very good at that too. Checking for fires must have been a secret hidden talent of his because every single time he checked for a fire there either was one or there wasn’t. Every. Single. Time.

Steve and Bucky held the exact same record, unfortunately. So he wouldn’t be going up on a wall of fame.

“I think if I hike anymore my legs are gonna kick my own ass,” said Bucky.

“Out of energy?” asked Sam.

“Out of patience. I’ve been walking the same fuckin’ radii for three fuckin’ weeks. I’ve seen all there is to see in my neck ‘a the woods,” said Bucky.

“I’m not usually on board for your bitterness but I have to agree, I’m bored to tears,” said Steve.

“Why don’t we meet up and have that picnic we’ve been joking about?” offered Sam. He was more than a little interested in what the other two looked like, especially after overhearing about Bucky’s mystery arm. “I got like twelve packets of hotdogs.”

“Eh,” said Steve. “We’re really not supposed to do that.”

“I would be in but…I don’t want my pay docked,” said Bucky. Flimsy excuses at best. It was clear to Sam that they just didn’t want to see him.

“Okay…Well…Alright, I’m gonna tune out for a little bit.”

“Oh, alright. Bye, Sam,” said Steve. The prick.

Sam switched is radio off. He had no real goal so he ended up on a lakeside. Or a riverside, he wasn’t high enough to be able to tell if the current flowing through it led anywhere. Birds were abundant by the water, they were eating and bathing and singing loud enough to drown out all other noise around Sam as he skipped rocks. The picture he took for Natasha didn’t do the place justice. 

 

 

  
_June 16th, 1977_

_Dear Nat,_

_You don’t need to report them, I think they might just be kinda weird and private guys. I haven’t even really laid eyes on them yet and we’re comin’ up on three weeks here so. My dad says your cleaning out his attic for him. Be careful, he’s a packrat. I know when you said you’d do me any favor I needed you meant it so could you please for the love of all that is holy, send me some of those cookies. The ones you said you made for Sharon’s party but you actually bought from that bakery? The food here is “technically-edible” at best, it’s worse than rations if you can believe. Sometimes it doesn’t even meet that standard. They send it to us in two-week bundles. It’s all dehydrated this, powdered that. I’d kill for vegetables but don’t send those or they’ll just rot. The cookies will be just fine. :)_

_XOXO,  
_ _President LBJ_

 

 

 

  
_June 16th, 1977_

_Dad,_

_You don’t need to watch the bushfires, that’s not even my job, that’s the real rangers’ job. It’s good that Nat’s cleaning all that stuff out but keep an eye on her. She might be trying to convert the attic into her own sound studio for the two of you listen to her loud music. Also, I swear if a fire does break out I’ll let the whole forest and park burn to a crisp before I risk my own life. I’m through risking my own ass, I’ll let someone else play hero from now on. If you really want to do me a favor, stop eating all that butter. You know it’s bad for you and you don’t even like it that much. Throw it out, already._

_Love,  
_ _Samuel_

 

Sam sealed the envelopes and stamped them. He’d lock them in the ranger station’s lockbox to be mailed away the next morning but for now he was free to sleep. Hiking all day took it out of him more than he was expecting. The short list of possible reasons was narrowed down to the heat or the mental exhaustion that came from checking for mines. He’d been tuned out since that morning and didn’t feel the need to tune back in just to say goodnight. It was probably weird that they all three said goodnight every single night anyway so he settled and just turned the radio back on and put it to charge without saying a word.

 

 

 

_He dove down deep and rose up quick, something he and Riley learned would create that adrenaline rush of a rollercoaster if done_ just _right. Down and up and down and up until Sam broke and flew level._

_“Can’t take the heat huh?” said Riley. His voice was so close but he and his wings were miles away._

_“I don’t have the iron stomach you’ve got,” replied Sam._

_“I know you don’t, I’ve seen you try to down my cooking,” joked Riley. “Come on it’s time to wake up.”_

_“What?”_

_“You’re dreamin’ again, Sammy, wake up!”_

So Sam did. He opened his eyes and sat up, his vision blurring in an out of focus. The sun set outside his windows, it looked so much pinker than it ever had. 

“Isn’t it gorgeous out there, Sam?” said Riley over the radio. Sam reached for his radio and cradled it. 

“It’s just like back over there all those nights we watched it. But better.”

“I’ll always hate that place but it gave me you. I hate it but I’m so fuckin’ thankful. Sam.”

“Are you here?” asked Sam. He checked his surroundings. “Are you in Bighorn?” Riley’s voice crackled in and out in response. “You still there?”

“I’m here,” said Riley. “I won’t leave you, Sam.”

“Riley I wanna see you again, I’d give anything to see you again,” said Sam.

“Someday, maybe. God look at this place, it’s just like over there but so much clearer and safer. Wouldn’t it’ve been nice to go camping the two of us?”

“Knowing us we’d get attacked by a bear or some shit,” laughed Sam. Riley laughed too. He hadn’t heard that laugh in two years, going on three. “If you’re alive where the hell’ve you been?” Another staticky crackle in response. “Alright, alright you don’t have to answer that.

“I love you,” said Riley. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” said Sam. “Riley. Riley. I love you name, Riley.”

“This view is amazing,” said Riley. “Just like the skies back over there.”

“I already said that,” said Sam.

“This view is amazing. Just like the skies back over there.”

“Riley?” 

“This view is amazing. Just like the skies back over there.”

“Riley, come on, stop fuckin’ with me.”

“This view is amazing. Just like the skies back over there. This view is amazing. Just like the skies back over there.”

“ _Riley._ ”

 

 

 

“..AM…SAM…SAM! WAKE THE HELL UP!” screamed Bucky over the radio. Sam opened his eyes. The radio rested in his palm and he stood at the railing of the tower’s balcony. “Steve, can you still see him?!”

“Yeah, he’s still just standing there.”

“Fuck this, I’m gonna go wake him up my damn self before he falls off that fuckin’ railing,” said Bucky. Sam collected himself enough to press the button and chime in.

“What’s going on?” asked Sam.

“Sam?” said Bucky cautiously. “You awake?”

“Yeah…why the hell’m I on the balcony?”

“Oh thank fuckin’ God,” said Bucky. 

“You were sleepwalking I guess,” said Steve. “You were talking into the radio and you weren’t making sense so Bucky checked and you were just standing in the middle of the room then you said something about the view and started fuckin’ walking out.”

“Fuck,” said Bucky, a clear shake to his voice. “Fuck, I thought you were gonna fall down those fuckin’ stairs.”

“I’m okay, though,” said Sam. He meandered back into the tower and locked the door behind himself. “What…did I say?”

“You kept saying stuff about being in Bighorn…and then that you liked the view, and then ‘Riley’. You said that name a few times,” said Steve.

“That’s it?”

“Yeah,” said Bucky. His voice was still shaking. 

“Sorry to wake and worry you both like this, I didn’t mean to,” said Sam. He couldn’t help being a little touched that the two of them were so worried.

“It’s okay,” said Steve, quickly. “But…ya know if you wanna talk about anything…We’re pretty anonymous out here.”

“Eh…thanks but…” trailed Sam.

“That’s fine too,” said Steve. “Well, try and get some more sleep.”

“And for the love of fuckin’ God, Sam, strap yourself in or something,” said Bucky. “Good night!”

“Goodnight, Sam,” said Steve a bit gentler.

“Night you two.”

Sam got back in bed and stared aimlessly at the ceiling. It’d been a full eight months since he dreamt of Riley. He could hear his voice so clearly, see his smile so perfectly. Riley spoke just how he used to, he said everything he normally would’ve said. Sam kept flicking his eyes over to the radio charging by his feet, waiting for Riley’s voice to come through it again.

 

 

 

Days started passing a little slower. There was no way to pinpoint the reason but Sam’s hypothesis was that he was required to use every hour of daylight and then some. That paired with how exhausting his hikes were meant that two days felt like ten. And a full week had passed.

In that full week, Steve and Bucky had tuned out together roughly twenty times. One would tune out and the other would join him. Sam didn’t know and wouldn’t ask why they felt the need to meet privately and to keep it secret. He wanted to stop suspecting them to be closet-racists but they were 60 years old. That was a very possible reason for excluding Sam in their little get togethers. Though not a topic Sam could easily broach.

“So what really brings you out here?” asked Bucky. Sam maneuvered a nonexistent trip wire before he answered.

“I already told you guys,” said Sam.

“You half told us,” said Steve. “You said you wanted to get away from the drama surrounding Captain America.”

“That’s the truth,” said Sam. “Also, not to be an ass but…I don’t know anything about you two. Why should I be spillin’ every last detail about myself to you two?”

“You know about us,” said Bucky. Sam could feel the words demanding an answer bubbling up into his throat. He swallowed them. And then they bubbled right back up and out.

“Actually I don’t know jack shit about either of you—you won’t even tell me your exact ages. _And_ I know you two meet up somewhere whenever you ’tune out’! Where the hell are you going that _I’m_ not allowed to go, huh?! Or do you just want all white bread at the picnic?” Sam crushed the radio in his palm and wished he had capped his anger a little longer. 

“What?” said Steve. More bubbled out.

“You two! You fuckin—You meet up every time you tune out—you sit on your radios sometimes and I can fuckin’ hear you talkin’ to eachother! Together! I know the point ‘a bein’ out here isn’t to become best friends but I’m just as isolated as the two ‘a you so the only reason I can see for leavin’ me outta these little meet and greets is ‘cause y’all don’t want a fly in the buttermilk!” spat Sam. His mama’s accent was coming out again. He stretched out his jaw, as if that would help it fade.

“Oh, shit,” said Steve.

“Sam—Sam that’s not…” began Bucky. 

“Yeah yeah, I’m sure that’s not it. Fuck you two, I’m tunin’ out,” said Sam. For the most part, anger flowed out of Sam quickly. It took a lot of effort for him to stay mad about anything. But this lingered the rest of his hike. It wasn’t fair. Thanks to Bucky and Steve’s lack of a real welcome, Sam hadn’t seen another person in almost a month, if he excluded those campers he said one solitary word to. And now that he tuned himself out, he didn’t even have Bucky and Steve’s voices chirping in and out to keep him company. 

 

  
June 21st, 1977

Dear LBJ,

If I did this right this letter came in a box of cookies. If that’s not what happened let me know and I’ll try again. I hope they didn’t spoil on their way over there. And I got you assorted because I forgot if you preferred chocolate chip to oatmeal raisin these days. Your dad and I completely cleared out the attic, aside from your mama’s stuff. It’s either neatly filed and put away or it’s downstairs where it belongs. He had a full set of china up there that he wasn’t gonna use. I said, what’s the point in china if all you do is save it. So we’ve been eating off the good china the last couple of days. Sharon noticed you weren’t on my shoulder so much. That got a conversation started so thank you for that. I don’t know why I get so nervous around her, it’s embarrassing. Speaking of. Can I tell your dad about that kind of stuff or have you two not really had it out about Riley? Don’t answer that if you don’t want to. I know I act like I deserve every bit of information about you but I swear I do know when to shut up.

Persisting admiration,  
Bazooka Joe 

 

 

 

  
June 20th, 1977

Dear Samuel,

Natasha’s probably filled you in on everything she’s done with the attic. We found some of your old costumes from when the two of you trick-or-treated. It was the year she went as a zombie cat and you went as a bee. And then we found the pictures of you and her dressed up. Mama’s in a few of them. I remember getting so angry about you being a bee, I said it wasn’t scary enough to be a halloween costume and that you didn’t understand the holiday at all. Looking back I guess I just didn’t understand much about you. Your mama did, but it took so long for me to get it. You must’ve been eight or nine before I got you. Anyway, that’s just ramblings of an old man. Natasha showed me some of the pictures you took out their. You’re in the wrong line of work kid, you’ve got to be a professional photographer. I’ll pay for your first shoot, I want a few good portraits of me so you can hang one over your fireplace.

Love,  
Dad

 

Sam stared at his father’s letter for an extra minute. There was an understanding between them. That understanding preventing them from ever saying anything outright to acknowledge _it_. Which meant Sam had to spend an extra few minutes trying to decipher what his dad meant but the ‘bee costume’ story.

“Sam? You there?” asked Steve. Sam tuned back in out of habit when he put the radio to charge. Hours ago he would have screamed more and tuned right back out but most of the anger had ebbed away. He rolled the radio over in his hands a few times before pressing the button.

“I’m here,” replied Sam.

“Sam—I know it looks bad from the outside but we weren’t seeing each other without you because you…are…because you’re…Because…We don’t care that you’re…well we care but it doesn’t matter that…fuck,” said Bucky.

“Because I’m Black,” said Sam.

“Right! It’s nothing to do with you,” said Bucky.

“Then what is it to do with?” asked Sam. Even if it wasn’t the truth, they had all day to come up with a good excuse.

“It’s…Well…Sam, how were you involved in the Captain America fight on the D.C. bridge again?” asked Steve.

“Stay on topic, Steve.”

“This is on topic, I swear.”

“Fine. Cap fell between two cars and I was sitting in the open space so I helped him get out and then I gave him some cover fire. I’m that civilian that everyone’s been saying he ‘enlisted’,” said Sam.

“That’s what I was thinking,” said Steve. “You’re _the_ Sam Wilson."

“You…Wait they never put my full name on the news,” said Sam.

“Yeah but you gave me your name when I landed on you,” said Steve. “The last few days I thought it was you but I couldn’t be sure. I haven’t gotten a very good look at your face.”

“Wait…”

“Guess Steve’s last name,” said Bucky. “I’ll give you a hint, it rhymes with ‘Dodgers’.”

“No—No way— _Captain America_?!” was all Sam could muster up. 

Steve laughed. “As we live and breathe.”

“So _that’s_ why you guys are racist?” asked Sam, unsure how it connected. 

“No—that’s not what we’re—That’s not what’s goin’ on!” interjected Bucky. “We—I mean there’re a few reasons we sorta hid from you—We just didn’t want you to find out who we were and then tell the world and have reporters at our towers. We waited some peace and quiet just as much as you do.”

“So you didn’t trust me?” said Sam. 

“That’s—It’s not that we didn’t trust you,” stammered Steve. “We…”

“Okay— _I_ didn’t trust you at first,” conceded Bucky. At least one of them was being straight with Sam. “But can you blame me? Everyone in america right now is after our asses thinkin’ we’re distributing communist manifestos.”

“Wait…Okay so if Steve’s ‘Steve Rogers’, who are you?”

Bucky scoffed. “Who am I?! Who am _I_?! I’m _the_ James Barnes! I’ve been told I’m a war hero!”

“Wha—What the fuck kinda nickname is ‘Bucky’ then?!” 

“I gave it to him when we were kids,” admitted Steve. “His middle name’s Buchanan and I hated James.”

A long silence followed as Sam let all of that _news_ settle in. Captain America had been talking to him for four weeks straight over a radio, his best friend since birth had been spying on him for four weeks straight. He’d played an enormous version of iSpy with the greatest soldiers in history and he might’ve gone the entire summer without finding out.

“Wow,” said Sam finally.

“For the record, I wanted to tell you the second I knew you weren’t some tabloid but _Steve_ said it might freak you out!” said Bucky.

“I didn’t know we’d already met before!” replied Steve. “But you’re right, we should’ve said something much sooner and we definitely didn’t mean to make you feel excluded or…ya know discriminated against—“

“Yeah, I get it,” laughed Sam. He could hear how carefully Steve chose those words. “But what finally tipped you in my favor, Bucky? And—and if you trusted me so much, Steve, why didn’t you deign to tell me this?”

“I trusted you implicitly the day you said you ate five and a half uncooked hotdogs out of the package. A man who is honest about such a shameful meal is trustworthy,” said Bucky. 

“Well…once Bucky decided you weren’t a reporter I did want to tell you but…” began Steve, “You said you came here to get away from the Captain America drama which…is hard when I’m on your radio day and night. I didn’t want you to feel like you were trapped with the one thing you came here to escape.”

“So?” said Sam. “So that’s it then? That’s the whole reason you two have been so sneaky and weird around me?”

There was a pause. “Yep,” replied Bucky.

“Please, don’t tell,” said Steve. “I know you’ve got every right at this point to make a killing telling all the reporters where we vanished off to but…please don’t.”

“I wouldn’t—I won’t,” said Sam.

“Hey look out west,” said Bucky. “The sunset’s even pinker tonight.”

“It’s just as pink as it was last night,” replied Steve.

“I think it’s more orange.”

“You two’re idiots, it’s practically magenta. Sam, take a picture with that big fancy camera ‘a yours,” said Bucky. “Take three, I want one.”

“You’re payin’ for more film then.” Sam took three pictures of the sunset. There was no way his little polaroid would be able to properly capture every color and swirl in the clouds but it was worth a shot. 

 

 

 

Sam laid awake and ate the cookies Natasha had sent over. Steve and Bucky had promised to invite him on their next little excursion after their ‘discussion’ two nights prior but so far they hadn’t met up. Steve said he drew their view every day but Sam was never patient enough for art especially not a summer of art. Bucky’s pastime was bothering everyone. Sam didn’t have a pastime yet. So he settled for eating the half the box of cookies Natasha sent.

“He looks asleep to me,” said Bucky over the radio.

“Switch to channel 5,” replied Steve.

Sam stayed frozen in his cot. If Bucky knew he was ‘asleep’ he was spying on him _again_. If he wanted to eavesdrop he had to stay still. So he wrangled his radio off it’s charging dock with his foot and in one quick movement threw it square onto his chest. He paused to make sure Bucky hadn’t seen, and then tuned to channel 5. 

“…eet him” said Steve.

“I do wanna meet him but…” said Bucky.

“Buck, it doesn’t bother me, why would it bother him?” replied Steve.

“You’ve known me since before I knew myself. Of course it doesn’t bother _you_. Ya know before these past few months I’d never had to introduce myself to someone with it and…frankly most people stare.”

“He’s a vet too, he’s not gonna stare.”

“But he’s fine! I spend enough time watchin’ him, I know he’s fine!”

“Buck, you’re making a bigger deal out of it than you should.”

“Well…if we just never meet him I don’t have to worry about it.”

“We’re gonna meet him. Tomorrow.”

“No—Steve, no!” begged Bucky.

“Yes, Steve, yes!” replied Steve.

“Steve I mean it!”

“I mean it too! You’re gonna laugh at yourself, I promise.”

“I’ll just cover it up then.”

“In this heat?”

“He might be busy tomorrow, Steve. How do you know he’ll wanna see us?”

“I’ll check,” said Steve. 

“Steve! Wait!”

Sam hurried to tune his radio back to it’s original channel. 

“…am? Sam? You awake over there?”

Sam did his best sleepy voice. “Steve?”

“Hey, we’ve got a slow day tomorrow, wanna meet in the middle and have that picnic we keep jokin’ about?” asked Steve.

“You don’t have to,” interjected Bucky. “We have plenty of time so if you don’t wanna do it tomorrow it’s fine.”

“Um…” If Steve thought whatever Bucky’s anxiety was an overreaction it probably was. But he still felt bad about forcing Bucky into it. “Sure.”

“Meet at that ravine thing, the water’s clearest over there. You brought swimming trunks right?”

“Not really but I can improvise,” said Sam.

“Nice, we’ll see you after we’ve all made our rounds. Night, Sam.”

“Night guys.”

The two of them tuned out as fast as they’d tuned in. On an obvious hunch, Sam tuned his radio over to channel 5 to see if they were still arguing. And sure enough. 

“Steve!” plead Bucky.

“You gotta leave your comfort zone one day,” said Steve.

“But it should be my decision!”

“Not if you never make a damn decision. It’ll be fine. We’re allowed to start a fire tomorrow so we can make ourselves lunch too. It’ll be fun.”

“It won’t be fun.”

“You have fun when it’s just you and me.”

“Fuck you.”

Bucky tuned out. Steve did the same. Sam turned his channel back to it’s original setting and put his radio back in its charging deck. He laid back down to sleep but failed. His mind speculated beyond reality, trying to understand what could make Bucky so self conscious. If there was anyone who oozed confidence it was him so whatever turned him into a shrinking violet had to be big. 

He made a move for his telescope. Earlier he tried to get a good look at the pathetic little waterfall that was a few hundred yards north. The focus wouldn’t fucking focus so he gave up hours before. As casually as possible, he turned the telescope to south and placed it in the southern window. He could see inside Bucky’s tower but everything blurred into one yellow-ish blob surrounded by deep-blue darkness.

Without thinking Sam reached for his radio. “Bucky, how do you adjust the focus on the telescopes?”

He saw a bit of a flicker in the yellow mass. “Turn the knob with the most ridges on it. It’s kinda like a microscope.”

“Okay, hang on.” Sam turned the knob and saw Bucky’s body easily distinguishable from his surroundings. His tower looked almost identical to Sam’s. He stood in the middle at the map table. Radio in one hand and something too small for Sam to see in the other. “How do I focus it more?”

“Once you’ve maxed out your focus with that knob move to the next one, it should be a little smaller.”

Bucky came into focus. The telescope didn’t offer him a way to really capture his face. He had dark hair and light skin but from the view Sam got through the scope he couldn’t pick him out of a line up. 

“What’re you looking at anyway?” asked Bucky. He wore a tanktop. So did Sam. Their little AC units in their towers were no match for the Bighorn heat. His exposed shoulders allowed Sam to see the tattoo on Bucky’s upper arm. He faced out to the west window so Sam couldn’t check his other arm for another tattoo. He couldn’t be sure why, but Bucky having a tattoo completely skewed his view of him. 

“What’s that a tattoo of? It looks like an arrow,” said Sam. Bucky turned to face the window Sam was peering through and hit the deck seconds later.

“You’re spying on me?!” screamed Bucky.

“It’s only fair!” replied Sam. Why would Bucky be so embarrassed about a tattoo. The only reason Sam could think of was their old fashioned-ness. Maybe back when they were young tattoos were a sign of a sinner and Bucky wasn’t aware that the times had changed. “What’s the tattoo of?!”

Bucky’s head appeared at the edge of the window sill. “Fuck off, I’m goin’ to bed!” Bucky’s only resurfaced once he switched off the lights. Sam watched him climb into bed. He’d find out about that damn tattoo soon enough.

 


	5. Chapter 5

 

 

 

“Alright, I’m heading out to the ravine, who’s comin’?” said Steve. Sam was a few miles out and sweating his ass off in the afternoon heat.

“I’m on my way.”

“I’ve got marshmallows. We might be up for roastin’ ‘em once we cool off some,” said Steve.

“I think I’m comin’ down with something,” said Bucky with an unconvincing cough. “I’ll sit this one out, I don’t wanna get either of you sick.”

“The sun’ll do you some good,” snapped Steve a little too forcefully. “I’ll see you within the hour. What about you, Sam?”

“I’m headed that way, just gotta negotiate this cliff I accidentally climbed,” said Sam. Going up it felt like a slight incline but on his few attempts to descend it felt completely sheer. He spent the prior twenty odd minutes staring at the lower ground half abject sadness and half confusion.

“Buck and I’ll get the fire started. Don’t hurt yourself.”

“See you then.” Sam was embarrassed to admit to himself how nervous he was. Who wouldn’t be meeting Captain America? But he’d sort of already ticked that box. In fact he had Captain America in his _lap_ , he’d more than met him. He hadn’t met Bucky though, and that had his stomach flip flopping all over the place. There was the very real chance that Captain America and his other wouldn’t like him if they spent a real afternoon together. It’s easy to like someone you only talk to over the radio, but to meet that voice was a separate animal.

He negotiated the steep hillside. A tip from the war when maneuvering down sharp inclines was to zig zag and lean forward rather than back. Sam confidently strode down the incline using those tactics before his foot slipped and he slid down the rest of the way. It hurt like hell but it definitely faster.

He inspected his skinned arms and legs the rest of the journey to the ravine. Nothing too bad but it stung. After all he’d been through, he wasn’t going to admit that a skinned knee hurt, though.

“Finally!” screamed Steve. Sam had never heard his voice in person, well, save the _incident_ on the bridge. He scanned the area in search of him but found nothing. “Buck—Fan the flames or we’ll lose it again!”

“You’re blowing it out!” said Bucky.

Their bickering led Sam through thickets until he emerged in a sandy clearing that bordered a ravine. The ravine reflected the sun and blinded Sam. No amount of squinting helped.

“Hey,” said Sam as his eyes watered.

Bucky and Steve stood from their crouched positions by the fire. Steve grinned. “You made it!”

“Just barely,” said Sam. Steve looked just as he remembered from their brief meeting and the thousands of tv ads with his face plastered across them. Bucky looked. He sure looked. Boy did he _look_. Sam’s squinting made it difficult for them to tell what he was looking at, which made staring at Bucky that much easier. Goddamn did he _look_.

“We’ve got marshmallows and all the makings of bologna sandwiches,” said Steve with an all-american smile. Steve stood in just his swimming trunks, trunks with the flag printed on them. Sam didn’t look at the fixins when Steve gestured to them, his eyes were locked on the sharp cuts of muscle all over Steve. Being Captain America must’ve been a damn good workout routine.

God, he hoped they couldn’t see him blushing.

“I—“ said Sam. He set his backpack down and fumbled around inside of it. “I brought hotdogs.”

“More of those hotdogs you keep eating raw?” teased Bucky.

“One and the same,” replied Sam without looking up. He triumphantly recovered the hotdog packet from the depths of his backpack and tossed them to Steve. “Do what you want with ‘em.”

“We found a beer in Steve’s minifridge, you want a sip?” said Bucky holding out a can for him.

“A sip?” said Sam.

“Yeah we found _a_ beer. Just one. You want a sip or not?”

Sam stumbled over his own feet on his way to desperately accept Bucky’s offer. They didn’t laugh, bless ‘em. He took his allotted sip with Bucky’s eyes boring into him. His eyes weren’t as blue as Steve’s, they were more grey, but his lashes were much darker. “I said a sip!”

Sam panicked and handed the can back in too much of hurry. Beer dribbled down his chin and neck. Bucky grinned and handed the beer back to Steve. It was the first time Sam noticed Bucky’s hoodie. Sam was mostly immune to heat after the war but even he was overheating out in Bighorn. Wearing any more clothing than absolutely necessary was suspicious to say the least but if someone, like Bucky, were trying to conceal an arm for some reason, that would do the trick.

“You’re shorter than I thought you’d be,” said Bucky.

“You daydream about his height a lot?” teased Steve.

“I did have a picture in my head of him,” said Bucky. “You had one of me too right?”

Sam nodded, trying to think up something equally snarky. “Yeah, you’re prettier than I thought you’d be.” Not as much snark as he hoped and much weirder than he planned. Sam silently thanked God for a good life up until that point as embarrassment closed in around him. Steve and Bucky stared at him with half-smiles and Sam squinted back, blank and blushing.

“A lot of people say that about him,” said Steve, saving Sam’s life. He pinched Bucky’s cheek. “His mom said it’s because somewhere in the womb he became a boy a little late so he got the same features as his sisters.”

“You sure do love tellin’ people we barely know that fuckin’ story,” said Bucky through gritted teeth.

“Good thing we know Sam really well.” Steve hooked an arm around Sam’s neck. “Oh, by the way, you’re in luck, we found a third set ‘a trunks.”

“Where?”

“Bucky’s tower, he was diggin’ around and found some,” said Steve. “Where’d you put ‘em Buck?”

Bucky lazily tossed Sam a pair of hot pink trunks. They looked _almost_ his size. ‘Almost’ is a bad size to have your bathing suit be. “They’re kinda small…”

“If they don’t fit you can wear Bucky’s.”

“He can?” said Bucky with a laugh.

“You tried those ones on and they fit,” said Steve. “We’ve got that heavy duty bug repellent once you get changed. It’s mandatory.”

Sam had just barely regained his regular sense of modesty, the war had stripped him of it two weeks in. After stripping off his sweat-soaked shirt he ducked into the thickets to try and wrangle the hot pink trunks on. Steve waded into the water with no hesitation while Bucky continued to stoke the fire.

It would’ve been picturesque, perfect, a dream, if the trunks would fucking go higher than his thighs. No matter what kind of harm he threatened them with, they wouldn’t go past his ass. Minutes, hours, days passed and still they didn’t budge from their spot across Sam’s thighs.

“You dead over there, Sam?” asked Bucky. He sat out along the shore of the ravine. Steve did laps and handstands in the water while Bucky lazily cheered him on.

“Uh…” said Sam with one final and futile tug to the pink suit. “Wanna trade?”

“I don’t but I will,” said Bucky. He scrambled to his feet and walked to see Sam at the edge of the thickets. “Well?”

“Well what?”

“Gimme the trunks,” replied Bucky with a hand out. Sam handed over the pink trunks and waited for Bucky’s in return. The pamphlet he read about snake bites burst to the front of his mind and had him wondering what he’d do if one bit his dick. In his current state, a snake definitely had the upper hand. “Close your eyes unless you want a show.”

He heard the slide of the fabric riding up Bucky’s legs and was promptly hit in the chest with Bucky’s trunks that had Hawaiian flowers in a stripe across the ass. “Thanks.”

“Mhm.”

Sam hurried to tug on the trunks and flinched when he felt how warm they were. Bucky was…well he _looked_ , but the warm trunks still didn’t feel voyeristic or sexy, they felt more like a warm toilet seat.

He emerged from the thicket and caught the can of bug spray Bucky tossed him.

“Why’s this mandatory again?” Sam sprayed his legs first and bit his lip when his skinned knees screamed in response.

“Steve read an article about malaria before we left. He’s been spraying himself and me down ever since we got here.”

“SPRAY HIM WITH THE SPRAY!” screamed Steve from the other side of the ravine once he saw Sam at the edge of the water.

“YEAH I KNOW!” replied Bucky.

“He your keeper?” asked Sam.

“Something like that.” Bucky laid down in the sand. His ball cap covered his face and his hands crossed behind his head.

“You not swimmin’?”

Bucky shook his head. “I’m sunnin’ until further notice.”

“Aren’t you hot? In that sweater?” asked Sam.

“You wanna switch trunks again or do you wanna mind your business?” asked Bucky.

Sam could feel a bad mood coming so he waded into the water, Steve did the same on the other side and the two of them met in the middle at one of the rock formations.

“Buck not joinin’ us?” asked Steve.

Sam shook his head. “Guess he’s not in the mood or something.”

“Wanna race?” asked Steve. A playful smile spread across his face.

“I’d be an idiot to try and race Captain America.”

Steve half laughed, half groaned, and pulled himself up onto the rocks. He basked in the sun like a desert lizard. Awkward and precarious. Sam joined him.

“This what you two do without me?” said Sam. “You swim he swelters?”

“Usually he’s in the water too,” said Steve. “When we were kids he taught me to swim. I had asthma so treading water was a bitch but I also had scoliosis so the water helped kinda. And when I got tired Bucky’d carry me."

“He…He all there? In the head?” asked Sam. Being under enemy brainwashing for over thirty years can’t have done wonders for his memory, his personality. Which is probably why Sam didn’t get a response. Steve ignored him and stared back at the beach at Bucky’s splayed out form.

“Buck!” shouted Steve. “Water’ll be good for ya!”

“Maybe later,” replied Bucky with a lazy wave. Sam only just heard him over the sound of the slow moving water.

“Can’t blame me for trying…” He turned to look at Sam, Sam turned to look at him and the two just stared. “It’s strange…We’ve been talking for weeks now but it’s almost like we’re just meeting.”

“You know,” said Sam. “In the comics you’re a little more built.”

“Oh really?” laughed Steve.

“Not that you’re not in good shape,” said Sam, his voice dripping with sarcasm, “I was just expectin’ a little more.”

“Well, sorry to disappoint _another_ fine citizen, I’ll be sure to hit the gym as soon as we get back.” Steve paused, sighed, and waved once more to Bucky before continuing. “I heard you finally got back at him for spying on you last night,” said Steve.

“He seemed way more pissed than I thought he’d be, especially given the circumstance,” said Sam.

“He’s just…He doesn’t have a lot of insecurities. A lot of people say they don’t but he really doesn’t. So the few he _does_ have eat at him day and night.”

“What’s he got to be insecure about?” said Sam with a fake laugh. He hoped it would get some more information from Steve, hint at what Bucky was trying so hard to hide. But Steve saw through him.

“Maybe next time.”

 

 

 

He and Steve raced a few times. Steve won each time. He just couldn’t compete with Steve’s super strength potion. But if he was going to lose to anyone he was glad it was a super soldier. The two of them drifted downstream a little too far and walked their way back to the little shore that Bucky was laid out on. Bucky hadn’t moved since Sam left him, the sun was too low to ‘sun’ by then. Steve kicked his ankle.

“Buck, wake up.” His voice was gentle when he spoke. He sounded like Natasha when she woke him from a nightmare.

Bucky grumbled and sat up. “We all through?”

“You want a hotdog or a sandwich?”

He thought for a few moments, his sleepy eyes still adjusting to the sun in them. “Hotdog,” he grumbled out finally. Sam speared his hotdog and set it over the fire, Steve did the same for him and Bucky.

“You two done swimming?” asked Bucky.

“I’m not, I think I’ll get back in,” said Steve. “What about you, Sam?”

Sam watched Bucky’s sleepy face, watched his eyes focus completely on the sand between him and the little campfire they all circled. In the weeks they’d known each other, Bucky had never been so quiet and so melancholy.

“Bucky seems tired, we might go ahead and pack it in,” said Sam.

“I’m not tired,” replied Bucky, his eyes still focused in the middle distance.

“You do seem a little glassy,” replied Steve. Bucky just shrugged in response.

“Maybe you’re dehydrated,” offered Sam. After all he had been sitting and sweating all day and as far as Sam knew all he had to drink was a few regulated sips of _the_ beer. “Here let me get you something.”

Sam handed his hotdog off to Steve who kept it over the flame. Sam stumbled back to his backpack and got his canteen. It was still over halfway full. He hurried over to Bucky who took it wordlessly.

“Chug that,” said Steve when Bucky took two bird-sized sips.

“You’re not my mom,” snapped Bucky. Steve rolled his eyes in response and Sam stared into the middle distance, visibly uncomfortable.

When the time came, Steve pulled all their hotdogs from the sticks and put them in buns, well, folded over pieces of bread really but they did the same job. He handed Sam’s to him and Bucky snatched his away.

“This the only thing I’ve cooked since we’ve been out here,” laughed Steve. The tension took its time diffusing.

Silence set in. It was on the edge of comfortable and uncomfortable and it teetered back and forth too much for Sam’s liking. To distract himself he pulled out his camera and shot the ravine. Natasha had always been a sucker for waterscapes. Sam had tried to get her a few good pictures in Vietnam but the water there was too dangerous to let his guard down long enough to take pictures.

“Don’t get me in it,” said Bucky as Sam aimed the viewfinder.

“I’m not sellin’ these to the papers,” said Sam.

“I’m getting back in before the sun sets.” Steve wandered back to the water and Sam got a picture of him diving in.

“You gonna join him?” Bucky to the final bite of his hotdog.

“Are you?” said Sam.

“Not today.”

“Why?” He shrugged. “You know you care a lot more than I do.”

“About what?” snapped Bucky.

“You tell me.” Without another word he stood and raced into the water with Steve.

He reached the nearest rock formation and clung to it to rest for a few brief seconds. From the beach he heard muttering, cursing, blabbering. He looked back to see Bucky stuck in his sweatshirt.

“Yeah! Finally!” screamed Steve as he swam up next to Sam. A few more seconds of struggling and the sweater came off. Sam saw the tattoo from the night before. It was of his sergeant stripes, Sam had a similar tattoo on his arm to match. But, if he had to guess, Bucky hadn’t been trying to hide his tattoo but instead the robotic arm that he somehow never mentioned.

Sam took a sharp breath in when he saw it glint in the sun. It spooked him, as much as he hated to admit it, it did. No wonder Bucky had been so worried about Sam seeing it, he looked like a villain straight out of a Bond movie. And it moved. Just like a real arm. He controlled it like he did his flesh arm. But the surprise and confusion didn’t transfer to Sam’s face, no, he was stoic as Bucky dove in.

He swam fast. Much faster than Sam or Steve combined. The sudden reveal of his arm and the speed at which he swam towards the two of them had Sam internally scrambling for higher ground. But he didn’t let the confusion and misplaced panic show. Instead he sat on the underwater rocks with Steve and watched Bucky surface between the two of them, fighting every instinct.

“You cooled off now after all that sunning?” asked Steve. Sam eyed the seam where Bucky’s false arm met his skin. It was ragged and scarred, like the skin there had been chewed by a dog and welded back together. Sam pried his eyes from the sight of Bucky’s scar only to meet his gaze.

“It’s…fake,” said Bucky with downcast eyes.

“I gathered that,” replied Sam. “Y’know if I had a superpower I would disclose it immediately, why’re you two so intent on keepin’ cool shit like this secret?”

“Superpower?…Cool?” asked Bucky.

“Big metal arm’s a superpower in my book.” He meant it. The scar was still painful to look at and the shock hadn’t completely worn off but he meant every word. Shocking or not, it was interesting. “Where’d you get an arm like this anyway? Everyone I know missin’ an arm’s just got a collection of one-sleeved shirts, you got a workin’ robot.”

“The nazis gave it to me,” said Bucky.

“Don’t advertise that,” said Sam.

“When Steve found me, Stark gave it a couple upgrades. You know who Stark is right?”

“If you mean _the_ Howard Stark who I _already_ said _created_ my division of the army, then yeah, I’ve heard of him,” laughed Sam. “But people in my generation probably know his son a little better.”

“Yeah I don’t think the apple’s gonna fall too far from the tree,” said Bucky.

“Can it do anything cool?” asked Sam. He still flinched when Bucky moved it, when he saw it move like a real arm, but his curiosity began to take over.

“Not really. It’s just strong ‘cause it’s made ‘a metal. It’s a full-time arm."

“I’m surprised it can get wet, it seems…intricate.” Sam’s eyes locked and never left the metal plates sliding in and out of place with every nuanced movement Bucky made.

“Whoever made it spent a lot of money and time in it, I’d be more surprised if it weren’t waterproof.” Bucky looked Sam up and down for a moment, his eyes piercing a little deeper than they had earlier. “Alright, you asked about my arm, I’m gonna ask about that.” He pointed to Sam’s chest.

A scar ran from his naval halfway up his torso. He forgot about it often, and when he did remember he spent his time trying to forget.

“I got it in surgery back over in a field hospital,” said Sam. It wasn’t off limits. Bucky got his arm falling off a train in a mission. If Sam could ask about that, Bucky was free to reciprocate even if Sam was in no mood to remember.

“Surgery?” asked Steve. “What for.”

“It was a _field_ hospital,” emphasized Bucky.

“My partner…I mentioned him I think, Riley. He went down and I got distracted and caught some lead to the gut. But the doctor over there was really solid. Got me all patched up and sent home.”

Steve and Bucky stared at him with sympathetic eyes. He hated that most. The pity that often followed telling someone about his scar, about Riley. But the brief sympathy that flashed in Bucky’s eyes faded quickly and gave way to something else.

“Next time, die. You’ll get robot parts and a second life,” said Bucky. Sam laughed. Despite himself, he laughed. Once the two of them saw they hadn’t hit a sore spot they laughed with him. Bucky clapped Sam on the back with his metal arm. It was almost, _almost_ as warm as a human arm.

“Alright!” Steve stood up on the rock and let the water drown only his feet. “First one to the bank wins!”

Sam and Bucky hurried to get stood up and ready before Steve finished his three-count. Bucky beat them by too much. The robot arm gave him an advantage that even Steve’s superserum couldn’t balance out. Steve did beat Sam but it was much closer than Steve was willing to admit. Coming in last to two men genetically enhanced beyond the laws of nature held no shame in Sam’s book. When he flopped onto the shore after their sixth race it was with pride.

“Okay,” wheezed Sam into the sand. “Okay, I’m done. I wanna sleep.”

“You picked a good time for that, the sun’s down,” replied Bucky. His foot tapped Sam’s on his way back to the campfire.

“So when are we doin’ this again?” asked Steve.

“Whenever you want. I’ve suddenly come into a three month period of free time,” said Sam.

“Hey, you’re the only one of us with an outside connection, get one of your many friends to send beers or at least some better food,” added Bucky.

“I’ll ask but no promises, especially since it takes a decade for us to get any of our damn mail.”

“Back in our day, mail came three times a day. These days you’re lucky if the mailman’s there before noon,” said Steve.

“I’m still gonna say the world changed for the better,” said Sam. “Goodnight you two, thanks for…Well I brought the food.”

“We brought the one beer we all had to share,” laughed Steve.

“Right, thanks for that one sip of beer.”

 

 

 

“Everyone make it back okay?” asked Steve over the radio. Sam rolled his eyes.

“I’m a grown man, you don’t need to check in on me like you’re my mom,” teased Sam. He could just barely see his tower against the night sky.

“I was just checking to see if you were alive, it won’t happen again.”

“I tuned into the real rangers’ station last night, sounds like the fires aren’t going out,” said Bucky.

Sam hopped his way down a semi-steep hill, chasing his own heels as he tried not to fall. “They’ll tell us to leave if we need to.”

“I know,” said Bucky, “just not a huge fan of fires.”

“Who is?” replied Sam.

“Neither of you actually answered me, did you make it back?” repeated Steve.

“I’m climbing up my stairs right now,” said Bucky in a mocking tone.

“I’m almost to my tower,” said Sam. “I’m gonna tune out though, I wanna rinse off. When I don’t reply, don’t assume I died, Steve.”

“I’ll do my best,” said Steve. Sam clipped his radio back onto his belt loop and carefully maneuvered the tricky terrain leading up to his tower.

In the days he’d been there he’d gotten used to the hills and valleys and shales surrounding his tower. But no matter how used to the pitfalls and traps he became, they were still hard to get through. Especially at night. He jumped over what he could and eventually crash landed at the bottom of his tower where he stripped down and waited for the water pressure to rise.

Standing their, face buried in warm spring water, buck ass nude in the wilderness, he noticed he hadn’t stepped on a single trip wire his entire walk back. He hadn’t even been looking for them.

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for being late but midterms and etc. My bad! Please don't leave me lmao

 

 

 

 

_June 23rd 1977_

_Dear Bazooka Joe,_  
_  
_ _You’re not gonna fucking believe this. They told me not to tell but obviously I’m gonna tell you. I met the guys I work with, the two weird old men who won’t hang out with me. I finally met them and you’ll never guess. But I want you to try to guess so stop reading the letter right here and take a few stabs at it._

_ALL WRONG ANSWERS_

_The two guys are THE Captain America and James Barnes. Ya know? Those two supersoldiers who were MIA? The ones that every news anchor in D.C. thought had run off and joined the communist party? Yeah, they’re here with me. Steve (that’s what Captain America’s friends call him) even remembers me from that little powwow on the bridge. I won’t delve into too much detail but they’re here for similar reasons as I am so we get along really well._

_I thought they saw me through their little telescopes and didn’t wanna meet me because….well. But turns out, they just didn’t want me blabbing their whereabouts to you. Which I just did but I know you won’t tell a soul. And once they knew I wasn’t gonna blab (which I just did), apparently they felt guilty about ruining my getaway since I told them I was trying to get away from all the Cap shit. He’s really just as nice in real life as they make him seem in the comics._

_And his friend, the news calls him ‘Sergeant James Barnes’ but I call him Bucky (because, again I am friends with him now), is really_ _special interesting_ _cool too._

_I liked them before but now that they’re not being so fucking weird around me I like them even more. We had a beach day. Can you believe that? I had a beach day with Captain America! He’s just as ripped as you said he was by the way._

_All this aside, please send food and beer. If you do I promise I’ll throw another party with Sharon._

_Love,  
_ _Walter Cronkite_

 

“Who’re you writing to?” asked Steve over the radio.

Sam looked over his shoulder. “Not you too.”

“I can’t see you in much detail,” laughed Steve. “I’m mostly trying to get this damn thing to work. Bucky got his working in minutes, meanwhile it took me three days to figure out which end you look through.”

“Maybe he’s just a telescope whiz,” replied Sam.

“He is. He was a sniper. He’s used to dealing with all sorts of equipment, it was sorta his job in the Commandos. He and Howard Stark worked pretty closely. They don’t put that in the Smithsonian exhibit, though.”

Sam pressed a stamp onto the envelope. “You’re right they don’t. He met Howard Stark?”

“We were…The three of us were close. Not so much anymore, a lot’s changed. He’s got a wife and a son and Bucky just recently got his mind back so it’s understandable.”

“Wait, the three of you were friends? I didn’t even know Stark met you,” said Sam. He wasn’t a fan of his Captain America knowledge being tested like this. “I mean I knew he was there when you bulked up but after that?”

“It was covert. He was, and I guess still is, the greatest weapons developer and it would’ve been a huge boon for the Germans if he turned up dead. People give him a lot of shit for perpetually showboating but there’s a lot of him most people never got to see.”

“Ya know,” began Sam, aware he was wading into tricky waters, “a lot of people aren’t in favor of everything he’s done since your day. They think his weapons developing only fueled the fires in Korea and ‘nam.”

“I can understand that… Ya know…war starts out murky and just gets more and more convoluted. It’s hard to judge from the outside.”

“Hey—I’m not sayin’ anything against him. He created the WINGS program and that kept me sane over there.” Steve went quiet for a moment or two, Sam panicked thinking he’d misstepped. So he started saying more words hoping for a response. “So how did the three of you get to be such good friends? Ya know, with the war going on at the same time?”

“He was in the thick of it too,” replied Steve after a few beats. “War sorta shaves off any facades you’ve got. The Howard that we knew, the real one who wasn’t pandering to crowds, was a good man. Howard had more depth than most people gave him credit for.”

“So who was friends with him first?” asked Sam, eager to fill in the holes the Captain America comics left.

“It was simultaneous I guess. Although, Bucky did get a lot more time with him. Stark was always making new weapons for him to test,” laughed Steve.

“Why him? If anyone should’ve tested weapons it was you right?”

“I didn’t even finish bootcamp,” laughed Steve.

“Well but you’re a captain still.”

“Yeah but my best weapon was a shield not a gun,” said Steve.“Buck could take apart his rifle and put it back together in a minute flat on a bad day. If anyone was an expert in anything, Bucky was an expert in weapons. Even though I knew that that was why Howard chose him I still got jealous and invited myself to a lot of their sessions.”

Sam cocked his head. “Jealous?”

Steve’s radio clicked in an out a few times, as if he was pressing the talk button and releasing when he didn’t think of anything to say.

“That’s probably too strong of a word,” said Steve.

“No one made you use it,” teased Sam.

“I should go to bed, you should too,” said Steve. “Night.”

“Night.”

 

 

 

“It’s hot,” grumbled Bucky.

“It’s the heat,” replied Sam.

“Shut up,” snapped Bucky.

“Who wants to play more I-Spy?” offered Steve. “I spy, with my little eye, something—“

“Green? Brown? Leafy?” spat Bucky. “Everything looks the fucking same out here!”

“So we’ve all outgrown I-Spy then,” replied Steve.

Sam punched in the combination for the ranger lockbox and stuffed his letters from home in his backpack. “Does more heat mean more fire?”

“No,” said Bucky. “I already asked the main rangers’ on their channel. It’s just regular summer heat.”

“Well on the plus side, it’s too hot for campers now,” said Sam.

“Wrong. It’s too hot for normal campers. But those freaks who _love adventure_ or whatever other bullshit, are gonna take this as a challenge,” said Bucky.

“I haven’t seen a camper in days. The ones I do already know not to start fires…I’m starting to think they don’t really need us out here,” laughed Sam.

“So when should we all meet up for another barbecue?” said Steve.

“Depends. Sam, has your friend gotten us the beer yet?” asked Bucky.

“I just picked it up. I can go back and chill it in the fridge if you guys wanna meet later today.”

“Sounds perfect,” said Bucky.

 

 

 

Sam waddled through the thicket with beer freezing one side of his arms and the sun burning the other. The case of beer in his arms blocked his view of his feet, though, for the moment he found he didn’t mind not seeing his footsteps. His eyes stared straight ahead. An embarrassing rarity these days.

“You almost here?” whined Bucky over the radio.

Sam maneuvered the radio up to his mouth. “If you bitch one more time you don’t get any of the beer.”

“Who said I even wanted any?”

Sam ignored him and continued stepping heavy foot after heavy foot into the leaf-thick ground. And it made him nervous, made him sweat to not know exactly where his feet were landing. But he couldn’t stop. He could feel the Vietcong, right on his tail, about to grab him by the back of his collar and drag him off to God knows where. A mine was days better than capture so he broke into a sprint.

If he was anything, he was a runner. So he ran from the soldier, desperate to escape him. Desperate enough to ditch weight if it meant gaining a little more speed. So he threw the enormous case of cold beer down into the ground. His hiking pack followed as he sprinted from the soldier for his life.

Could’ve been minutes, could’ve been seconds, could’ve been years before he erupted out of the thicket into the clearing by the creekside. There stood Bucky, lording over Steve while they tried to get another fire going.

“There he is,” said Bucky. “Where’s the beer? And your pack?”

The truth was embarrassing. Reality partially crashed around him and mocked him for his panic while simultaneously urging him to keep running, keep escaping the soldier who could burst out of the thicket at any moment. “I…dropped it back there.”

“Why?” said Bucky with a laugh. Sam shrugged. “Okay…you gonna go back and get it?”

Sam just shook his head. The idea of facing that Vietcong soldier again cut into him and refused to let him look back. No beer was worth facing death again. “I’m just gonna set, if you want it you can go get it."

Sam caught his breath and plopped down by the circle of rocks that might one day contain a fire if Steve succeeded.

“Are you serious?” asked Bucky.

“As the grave,” replied Sam.

“Okay…I’ll be right back I guess,” said Bucky.

Sam watched him go. For a moment he considered warning Bucky, letting him know there was a rogue Vietcong lurking, waiting to pick off the invaders. But he couldn’t. He laid down in the sand once Bucky was no longer visible and waited for gunshots. Gunshots he knew he’d never hear, but he still waited.

“Did you see a snake or somethin’?” asked Steve.

“No.” That settled that. Steve was a private man and he respected that in others.

“Alright,” said Bucky somewhere behind the two of them. “ _I_ brought the beers. And your pack.”

The pack landed on Sam’s chest and the beer was sat by his head. Bucky ripped the box open and claimed the first can before passing one to each of them.

 

 

 

Four beers found their way into Sam. Sam was notoriously a lightweight. He wasn’t sure where he got it from since both of his parents could drink like fish but that’s how it panned out. He was tipsy, almost drunk, while Steve and Bucky were more sober than they were before the eight beers they each had.

“Hey you know you have to pay me back somehow for these beers, you two drank almost half the box each. That was supposed to last us more than one night,” said Sam. He gestured to them with the stick that was roasting his hotdog. Bucky whacked the flaming hotdog from his face. “And you’re not even drunk.”

“We cant,” said Bucky.

“What?”

“The serums we got also raise our metabolisms. The alcohol gets metabolized before it can get in our blood, it just doesn’t work,” said Steve.

“Then why the hell did you ask me to get us beer?” laughed Sam.

“Still tastes good,” said Bucky.

“You guys just keep gettin’ weirder.”

“Hey,” began Steve. “Tell us about this girl. The one that sent you the beer. You write to her a lot is there… _something_ there?”

Sam laughed. Steve and Bucky kept their faces neutral as they eyed him over their beer cans. Once he knew they weren’t joking, Sam rolled his eyes.

“No, we’re not like that,” said Sam as he downed the final sip of his fourth.

“Oh _come on_.” Bucky prodded his thigh with his bare foot. “There’s something else there.”

“I swear there isn’t,” said Sam.

“Tell us about her anyway. If you keep in touch way out here she must be important,” said Steve.

“Oh, she is. She’s my magpie,” said Sam.

“Your what?” said Steve with a smirk.

“His magpie,” replied Bucky.

Sam took a deep breath. His mind tried to condense all that Natasha meant to him in as few words as possible. “She and I grew up next door to each other. Well almost next door. But we were born best friends. We didn’t have any of the same friends at school, a lot of people didn’t even know we knew each other but we walked home together every day.”

“That’s how Bucky and I got our start,” said Steve with a laugh. Bucky elbowed him too hard in the side.

Sam held his breath for a few beats, wondering why the tension was thick enough to cut, before he continued his story. Less because he wanted to tell them about Natasha and much more because he wanted to distract from how hostile Bucky had become.

“She’s Russian. Her whole family is. They moved here to escape communism or something but once she got here a lot of kids called her a spy and shit so until middle school I was her only real friend. Then she hit puberty and she was everyone’s friend,” laughed Sam.

“So she’s pretty? Why haven’t you two gotten married yet?” said Steve.

“We dated our freshman year of college for about two months,” said Sam. “Neither of us had dated anyone before then and we figured why not try it. And we slept together and realized why not. It could’ve gone pretty bad but it just made us closer.”

Sam’s drunken mind started to swim, he started to notice Steve’s cheekbones, Bucky’s eyelashes. That happened to drunk-Sam, he saw the beauty that sober-Sam usually ignored. And it just kept getting prettier.

“What was so wrong with her? Or were you two just too close to date?” Steve’s hair looked like fire against the sunset. Bucky looked like he wore a halo. Sam could only imagine that his own face, all scrunched up and squinting against the orange light, looked a little swollen and sweaty from the beers.

“We just realized some shit about ourselves.”

“What kinda things?” said Bucky. Bucky’s lashes were long enough to catch the sun behind him. No small feat.

“Certain things.”

“That’s too vague,” said Bucky. “If we’re gonna be living out here together like this you can’t be keepin’ secrets.”

It was the beer talking. The beer shouting. The bear screaming at the top of its lungs, begging Sam to just live for a minute. To see the beauty in those boys, to say he saw it, to tell himself he was allowed to see it.

“Don’t hound him Buck—“

“I don’t like girls,” said Sam. Heat rose in his cheeks. “And she doesn’t like boys. Probably why we clicked so easily.”

Blushing may have been harder to see on Sam who sat in the setting’s sun’s crosshairs, but it was plain on Steve and Bucky’s faces. They looked like tomatoes. And then drunk Sam took a backseat. Drunk-Sam who had been so eager to finally just say those words to someone who wasn’t Natasha started deferring to sober-Sam. And sober-Sam knew that telling two white catholic men from the thirties the one secret it took him a year to tell his own therapist was a bad idea.

He smiled out of sheer discomfort and looked down at the can in his hand. “I shouldn’t’ve said that.”

Silence followed.

“Before you start swingin’, can I get a head start? Ya know…since you’re both genetically enhanced and it’s two against one?”

“Wh—Sam—We’re not gonna beat you for it—“ began Steve.

“We’re not—We’re good!” added Bucky.

Sam kept his eyes on his beer can and sucked his teeth. “Yeah…I’m gonna walk back to the tower, you two can split the last beers—“

“Sam—we really don’t—it’s really okay,” said Steve.

Sam’s eyes didn’t leave his beer can. He’d only ever told Natasha and the few people that did guess always promised it didn’t change anything. But no one had ever kept that promise and, Captain America or not, he wasn’t banking on the out-of-time-men being the exception. “Night guys—“

“Sam—Sam look—“ said Bucky. Sam kept his eyes locked on the final embers of the fire. “Sam—look!”

Sam braved the unknown and looked up from his beer. And there was Bucky. His hands on either side of Steve’s face, their lips pressed together. It looked rough but familiar.

“See?” said Bucky. “See?”

Sam wasn’t completely sure what he was supposed to be seeing. “Do I?”

“We’re you,” said Bucky, obviously fumbling over his words.

“You’re me?” replied Sam with genuine excitement.

“We’re you!” said Steve.

“We’re all us?!” Sam shakily stood up. Bucky and Steve did the same.

“We’re all us!” repeated Steve.

“We’re all us!” screamed Bucky to the darkening sky.

“We’re all us!”

“We’re all us!”

Sam let himself see them a little more. Let his eyes linger a little longer than they would’ve otherwise. They did the same to him. The last card had been played, the final stone overturned. Nothing rested between the three of them anymore and though they might not have felt the weight of it before, they certainly noticed when it left.

“This could’ve gone so much worse,” laughed Sam.

“We were thinking the same thing!” Bucky’s laugh was more relief than happiness.

“Holy shit…Natasha is gonna lose her mind when I tell her,” said Sam to himself.

“Oh—Don’t—Don’t tell people—“ said Sam.

“She sent us beer, we can trust her,” said Bucky. “And she’s one of us.”

“You know I’ve never actually told anyone except Natasha. A few people know but I’ve only actually told one person.”

“Same!” said Steve. “Bucky’s the only one who knew!”

“I told my dad on accident and he beat the shit outta me and locked me in my mother’s closet for the night. So compared to that this is incredible,” said Bucky with a laugh that didn’t match the content of what he said.

“And I thought I had it bad,” said Sam.

“Why’d you think that?” Steve sat down, once Steve sat so did Bucky and Sam.

“My mom knew and was pretty okay with it but my dad still can’t really talk about it. But it’s just because he gets squirrelly, I can’t imagine dealing with your parents,” said Sam.

“Eh, it’s no use comparing pain. Has he come around at all?” asked Bucky.

“Since the war his priorities shifted for sure. And it sort of got him used to me being in real relationships in a way.”

“How’s a war gonna do that?”

“Oh…” mumbled Sam.

“Riley,” finished Steve. Realization dawned on Bucky’s face seconds later followed by the face of uncomfortable pity that almost everyone gave Sam when he described losing his wingman. “I know what that’s like.”

“He used to write my dad all on his own. They never got to meet but they wrote each other. They both liked cooking—well barbecuing. They wrote a lot about that.”

“Was he any good?”

Sam laughed. “No. Everything he made tasted like a salt lick and felt like a shoe. But he tried…He was from Detroit. They don’t have good barbecue up there.”

“Sorry about what happened,” said Steve.

Sam shrugged. “A lot worse shit happened to a lot more people…Got no room to bitch and moan.”

“Sure you do,” said Steve. “When Bucky died, I cried for almost a week straight and vowed to kill all of Hydra singlehandedly. Other people may have it worse but you’re allowed to be sad.”

“You didn’t actually vow to kill all of Hydra did you?” said Sam with a chuckle he tried to keep down.

“I did,” laughed Steve. “I thought my sadness and rage would be enough to fuel me through a one-man mission to take down the entire third reich or something.”

“No offense, Steve, but your comics are pretty misleading. They make it seem like you were in love with Agent Carter,” said Sam.

“I know,” said Steve. “I kinda was.”

“Love hearing about how much you love her,” said Bucky, his voice drenched in sarcasm.

“Let me finish, Jesus. No one but a few _very trustworthy_ people knew. And…comics don’t sell if you put faggots in ‘em. It works better as a story with Pegs.”

“I still would’ve read ‘em,” said Sam.

“Well the kids of the forties wouldn’t. I like it better this way, I never liked having my whole life available to the public so it’s nice I can keep the most important part of it to myself.”

Bucky visibly softened despite himself.

“Must’ve been hard back then huh,” said Sam.

“Could’ve been worse, could ‘a died,” added Bucky. “Can’t’ve been all that great for you either.”

“Could ‘a died,” replied Sam.

“What’re the odds,” a smiled spread across Bucky’s face. “What’re the fuckin’ odds us three, three queers livin’ in the same city halfway across the country end up here together. Slim to none.”

 

 

 

 

_June 25th 1977_

_Dear Walter Cronkite,_

_You HAVE TO BE KIDDING ME! CAPTAIN AMERICA AND HIS BEST FRIEND ARE THERE AND YOU TALK TO THEM! Sounds like God finally heard all those prayers you made when you were twelve to meet him. That’s insane! It makes so much of all their weird shit make so much more sense. I really can’t believe this is really happening to you?! Is it good or bad? Ya know, for your recovery? I don’t think I trust your judgement though, you’re pretty biased when it comes to Captain America (or Steeevvveee as you call him now)._

_If you’re not too busy giving them free beer out of my pocket and staring at their rippling biceps, triceps, quadriceps, pentaceps, and so on, can you get them to sign something. Sharon’s also a huge fan, I think it’d go a long way with her. I won’t tell her where or how I got it don’t worry._

_Love you lots,  
_ _G. Gordon Liddy_

 

 

_June 26th 1977_

_G. Gordon Liddy,_

_MORE NEWS! MORE WEIRD BUT AMAZING NEWS! NEWS THAT YOU CANNOT TELL ANOTHER SOUL! SO IF YOU’RE NEAR ANYONE AT ALL PLEASE GET AWAY AND THEN READ THIS!_

_Okay so we had another beach day. We swam and ate and drank and it was fun. Also — side note — they can’t get drunk. It’s something about the serums they got or something but they just metabolize it too fast so they can’t get drunk. Made me wonder why they had me ask for beer but whatever._

_Anyway so we’re all around the fire talking and I’m pretty drunk, they aren’t. And they asked me about you. Said we sounded close, they know I write you all the time. They started asking if we were gonna get married and so on. And I told them a lot and then I just spit it out. I just said why we aren’t together. Can you believe that? I just said it outloud like it was nothing! Then I started panicking a little but Nat! They’re the same!_

_I know it might be hard to believe but I saw them kiss with my own to eyes and their own four lips! It was surreal! Respond to me ASAP! Also they’re only letting me tell you because…I sort of told them that you’re in our little club too. Sorry._

_Love you to the moon and back,_

_Billy Dee Williams_

 

 

_June 27th 1977,_

_Dear Dad,_

_I wrote to Nat, I hope she filled you in. I would’ve written you too but nothing happens here. I haven’t even seen a camper. It’s just as boring as it is pretty if you can believe. But I wanted to tell you before Nat could. So the guys I work with up here, Steve and Bucky. They’re nice but for awhile they were kind of weird. Long story short, turns out, they’re Steve Rogers and James Barnes. If you don’t recognize those names I’ll know how often you completely tuned out when I read you my Captain America comics._

_Can you believe that! I’m working with Captain America! It’s basically my dream job. If you told 17 year old me I’d be doing this in five short years I’d drop dead. So I can definitively say you can stop worrying about me. Captain America’s got my back now._

_Love,  
_ _Samuel_

 

“What’re you writing to them?” buzzed Bucky’s voice over the radio. Sam thought the two of them had long since gone to bed, it was past their old-man bedtimes. Though Bucky did insist he was a night owl, he was distinctly grumpy when he didn’t get his beauty rest.

“Take a wild guess,” replied Sam.

“Seriously, Sam, please don’t tell anyone other than that Natasha girl,” said Steve.

“I’m not! You really don’t have to tell me twice about the importance of keeping this a secret,” spat Sam. “I thought you guys trusted me now.”

“We do,” said Steve.

“It’s always stressful when you tell someone knew,” added Bucky. “And you were pretty drunk last night, we weren’t entirely sure you’d remember.”

“I could’ve been dead and still remembered that, it was probably the most surprised I’ve ever been. But this goes both ways, I don’t tell if you don’t,” said Sam.

Bucky’s radio cut in mid-laugh. “Who the hell would we even tell! You’re the only other person we know!” wheezed Bucky. “Night, man”

“Night, Bucky.”

“Night, Steve.”

“Night, Sam.”

“Goodnight Johnboy,” laughed Sam.

“Who’s that?” replied Steve.

“It’s a TV show,” said Sam with a sigh. “I bet y’all’ve never even seen a TV.”

“What’s a Tee-Vee? Is it like a picture-radio?” said Bucky. “You kids with your new fangled ee-leck-tricity!”

“Good. Night.”

Sam stamped the two enveloped and propped them up next to Riley’s picture and Natasha’s polaroids. Sam’s sleepy eyes started closing on their own. But for a brief moment Sam lingered. His thumb ran over Riley’s picture as it always did, and he couldn’t help but notice it was fading. Riley’s features cracked and blurred after years of Sam worrying it like a rosary. Sam let his thumb graze the edges and wondered silently if there was anything to be done to save the only likeness Sam had of Riley.

There wasn’t.


	7. Chapter 7

 

 

 

“Southern quarter, it looks like,” said Steve. Sam checked his map again. The sweat dripped down his face to such an extent that he was no longer annoyed by it but thankful.

“Okay…” began Sam, “I’m almost there I think.”

“I can go if you want me to,” said Bucky over the radio. “I’m just a little further than you.” 

“Nah, this is the most interesting thing that’s happened in weeks. I’m goin’.”

A small campfire’s smoke plume caught their eye five minutes ago. Sam volunteered himself. As soon as the wall of heat from the outside slapped him in the face, he tried to welch. But he _had_ been begging for a break from the monotony for days. This was his answer.

Step after step, the sun just got hotter and hotter. It reminded him of something.

Of.

“Sam? Do you read or copy or…whatever radio people say?” said Steve.

Sam’s eyes fixed on the ground he stood on, staring through his boots to see what he was stepping on. “Sorry did you say something?”

“You okay?” asked Bucky. “Heat stroke’s a real thing, Sam.”

“I’m,” replied Sam. He didn’t have the energy to finish that thought.

“Sam, if you’re gonna pass out can you please just tell us, I can’t deal with this kind of suspense,” grumbled Bucky.

He could tell, he could feel, he knew he was on a tripwire. If he moved one millimeter, one single hair, he’d set it off. His boots agreed and refused to move. So there he was, his boots cemented to the ground, one minuscule movement away from blowing himself and part of the mountainside up.

“Sam?” said Steve.

“He-yeah,” replied Sam.

“That wasn’t a word,” replied Bucky. “Sam if you’re having a heart attack or something we should really know.”

The boots just got heavier and heavier. More weight wouldn’t trip the wire but it hurt. It felt like the devil himself was clawing and pulling at Sam’s feet. His boots, no longer on his side, became vices that sunk into the earth little by little.

The damn, treacherous boots. Being pulled to the earth, through the earth, straight to the other side. Straight back to Vietnam. And they were gonna take Sam with them. The laces snaked up his calves and squeezed, tighter and tighter until his legs went numb. Sam screamed and begged them to release him.

The boots didn’t relent. So Sam killed and clawed at the laces strangling his legs. He ripped them apart and yanked his feet from the prison of the boots. He had nothing left to do but run. His boots would sink through the earth and the landmine would blow. If he did have any chance left, he had to run.

His bare feet cut and bled as he sprinted over the uneven, unsafe terrain of Bighorn. But anything to get away from the tripwire and it’s father mine.

”Sam?” crackled the radio. He couldn’t tell if it was Steve or Bucky anymore.

No time to explain, they’d understand when the bomb went off. Sam’s feet overestimated their abilities and lost their grip on a shale. He slid gracelessly down the steep, rocky slope. Once his body landed at the bottom of the slope, he curled up and covered his ears, waiting for the mine to blow a hole in the side of the mountain. Hopefully he wouldn’t go with it.

Three. Two.

Three. Two.

Three. Two.

“Sam?” buzzed the radio. Sam held his breath. He’d heard enough mines go off. They were always preceded by a piercing silence. A silence that never came. He could still hear the birds, the creek, the wind. “Sam, are you there?”

Sam stood up. He climbed the ledge of the shale with his beaten and bloody feet. The boots sat on the tripwire, they hadn’t sunk back to Vietnam, they hadn’t moved either. The serpentine laces hadn’t chased him, the boots hadn’t budged, and the bomb buried in the earth never went off, maybe never existed.

“Sam? What the hell’s going on?” plead Steve.

Sam’s eyes never left the boots, not more than twenty feet away, staring back at him. His hand shook when he raised the radio to his lips. “Nothing, it’s fine.”

With a huff, he lowered himself back down the shale’s ledge. And took a step. His eyes not trained on his feet this time but on the untainted mountainside whose only mar was the plume of campfire smoke still a few more hills and valleys away.

His feet, cracked and cut, carried him faithfully where he needed to be. Tripwires were left behind him, under his boots. His gaze took in the purple mountains and green forests while his soles embraced every sharp shard and splinter.

“Is this what you guys see every hike?” asked Sam. There was no response, he’d never lifted the radio to his lips.

A man gone wild, a man gone free. How much difference rested between the two. Sam couldn’t tell as he ran through the forest. And he _ran_ through. Not looking over his shoulders for snipers, for guerrillas. Not checking every inch of the forest floor for mines. Not listening for the sneaking enemy cocking a silent gun. Not living as if each step might be his last. He ran.

 

 

 

July 10th 1977

Dr. Briar,

Something happened to me. It’s hard to describe it. In fact, it’s so hard, I just won’t. I think this is working for me. Working well, in fact. I know I fought you on almost every issue I have so I thank you for sticking it out even though I was so insistent on using band-aids instead of stitches. I owe you.

-Sam Wilson’

 

Sam stamped the letter and put it next to the polaroids he was supposed to send to Natasha.

His feet throbbed and bled onto the floor of his tower. They stung every time he moved them now that he stopped running. He rolled his way back onto them and limped, hopped to his sink. He jumped on the counter and slipped his feet under the faucet, flinching at the cold water only briefly.

“What the hell are you doing?” said Bucky with a chuckle.

“I cut my feet,” said Sam proudly. “Stop spying on me.”

“Oh…they okay?” asked Bucky.

“I guess.”

“Guessing’s not good enough,” replied Steve. “You could get…staph? I don’t know exactly what kind of disease you could get but I know it can’t be good. Disinfect and bandage before you do anything else."

“Disinfect with what?” laughed Sam.

“Point taken, just be sure to wrap ‘em real good in something. If you lose a foot out here, I can’t help you,” said Steve. “Well, actually, I guess if you lost a foot _anywhere_ I wouldn’t really be able to help but you get the point.”

“Shut up, Steve—How did you cut your feet?!” demanded Bucky.

“I just _did_ ,” replied Sam.

“ ‘I just did’,” mocked Bucky in response. “A real answer, Wilson!”

“My boots gave out,” said Sam.

“Gave out?” asked Steve. “Boots don’t give out. They’re boots.”

“These ones did. Either of you got a spare set for me to borrow?” asked Sam. He turned the faucet off and patted his calloused, cracked, and cut feet with one of four hand towels he had in his tower.

“I think I have some,” said Steve. “I guess I’ll bring ‘em to you.”

“Thank you kindly.”

 

 

 

“I brought the mail.” Steve tossed down two letters from home onto Sam’s desk. “And the boots. I also found some rubbing alcohol.” 

“Thanks,” said Sam. He stayed seated on the edge of his bed. His feet wouldn’t let him stray much further than that.

“Mhm,” replied Steve, sounding vaguely, sarcastically annoyed.

Steve soaked a washcloth in the rubbing alcohol and knelt in front of Sam’s bed to treat his wounds. Sam had wrapped his feet up in the one bandage he was relegated in his most recent care package. Steve began unwrapping the loosely wound fabric.

“I can do it,” said Sam. He reached for his foot and was swatted away.

“You’ve done enough,” teased Steve.

Sam stared at him while he worked the bandages off. He looked like a nurse, like he’d done this too many times before. It was hypnotic to see the care and gentle touch he had as he worked. Until he wrung the washcloth out over Sam’s soles.

“FUCK!” screamed Sam. His leg twitched out of control but Steve held it steady.

“Yeah, I bet that hurts huh.”

“Like hell!” Sam wiped the sweat from his forehead.

“Maybe next time you won’t cut your feet up half to hell,” said Steve. He was very cautious as he release his grip from Sam’s leg. His attention moved to Sam’s left leg, then. This time he inspected the soles of Sam’s feet that bit more. “Damn, were you just running on glass?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

Steve gripped Sam’s leg and braced him for the second round of rubbing alcohol that hurt just as much as the first round.

“Come on, soldier! It’s just a little antiseptic.”

“Hey,” buzzed Bucky over the radio. “Get back to your post, what if a fire breaks out or something?”

“We’ve been here, what like two months already and we’ve seen two campfires,” said Steve.

“You just jinxed it!” replied Bucky.

“Ugh, I’m goin’, I’m goin’,” said Steve as he made for the door. He offered Sam a short wave before heading out.

 

 

 

July 8th 1977

Dear Billy Dee Williams

WHAT???

I REFUSE TO BELIEVE THIS IS TRUE, ONLY BECAUSE NO ONE GETS THIS LUCKY! I CANNOT BELIEVE IT! I’M STUNNED, SHOCKED, FLABBERGASTED, TAKEN ABACK! I CAN’T STOP WRITING IN ALL CAPITALS, I CAN’T STOP REREADING THIS LETTER YOU WROTE ME, IT’S JUST TOO INCREDIBLE. THE CAPTAIN AMERICA IS IN LOVE WITH HIS BEST FRIEND AND COHORT? AND ALSO SOMEHOW THEY’RE BOTH SUPER SOLDIERS? THAT BOTH HAPPENED TO GET FROZEN AND DEFROSTED IN THE FUTU—

“He’s asleep,” said Bucky over the radio. “C’mon it’s been like a week.”

“Okay okay, I think channel 5’s free right now.”

“Perfect.”

Sam stared blankly at his letter waiting for the conversation to continue but it didn’t. Instead he heard two clicks. He had every intention of respecting their privacy and letting them do whatever it was they were doing over on channel five. He did have every intention of doing that. But, as if by magic, the radio appeared in his hand and before he could protest, it had tuned itself to channel 5.

“—’til I pass out,” said Steve’s interrupted voice.

“Yeah you’d like that?” groaned Bucky in response.

“Split me in half,” said Steve.

Sam calmly set his half-read letter from Natasha, and his unopened letter from his father, down next to the bed and got comfortable.

“You’ve always been too tight, Stevie, like you _want_ me to come early.”

“Maybe if you fuck me often enough.”

“Been fuckin’ you blind since ’35. You’re always gonna be too tight.”

“Maybe you’re just too big.”

“Too big ‘eh?” Bucky panted into the radio.

“Real fuckin’ big, biggest I’ve ever seen.”

“You ain’t seen much,” teased Bucky.

“Break my jaw on that thing.”

“God, I’d love to see you gaggin’ on it right now. You look so fuckin’ hot when your eyes roll back like that.” Bucky whined before cutting out.

“You gettin’ close?”

“Uh-huh,” whined Bucky. “C’mon Steve, talk to me.”

Steve moaned in response. “C’mon baby, come. Right down my throat. Get it deep in me, baby.”

“Ste—Steve!” cried Bucky before he must have, understandably, dropped his radio and cut out for a few brief seconds. Steve spent those seconds moaning into the radio himself.

“God, Steve! This job is good for like my mental health or whatever but I can’t wait ’til we’re sharin’ a bed again and I can just roll over on you.”

“Won’t be long now. We’re only here another month.”

“Mm. Night, Stevie. Don’t forget to switch your radio back to the right channel.”

“Roger that. Love you.”

“Love you.”

Sam’s feet throbbed, his whole body throbbed as his brain tried to process what he overheard. Overheard being the operative word. In the moment his curiosity got the best of him. He just had to pretend like he hadn’t heard it or risk embarrassing the two of them to death.

He switched his radio to its previous channel and reached over to set it to charge. On his way back down to his pillow he remembered he hadn’t finished reading his letters home.

DEFROSTED IN THE FUTURE! IT’S JUST INCREDIBLE, ITS LIKE THE WORLD WANTED THEM TO BE TOGETHER FROM DAY ONE AND MADE IT HAPPEN IN THE MOST EXTREME WAY POSSIBLE!

I hope me and Sharon are like that. Maybe. She returns my calls but all she ever wants to do is go on runs together (horrible), or “have lunch”. Here I am, five dollars to my name, going out to lunch with Sharon thinking one day she might eat me out like she does those paninis. She gets a panini every day by the way. I eat a slice of bread and gain forty pounds overnight, she eats a DAILY panini and she’s a tall stick.

That got off topic. Anyway — AWESOME! I won’t snitch I promise :)

Love,

Eric Clapton (listen to Cream more!)

 

July 9th 1977

Dear Samuel,

I’m glad it’s boring in the good way. Be sure to soak up that scenery while you can. You won’t get views like that in the city, especially not this city. Not that it’s all cracked up there in Wyoming — you should definitely **not** move there.

Natasha and I found a box of your old highschool baseball gear. Remember the one year you played before you got pegged in the face and quit? As I thought, you saved the baseball that ended your career as short stop. I went through it when Natasha was gone and found some more trinkets of you. A few class pictures, a few doodles, and a letter to that boy on your team. Gregory Marshall.

You know Samuel, I’ve never been good at expressing myself. Your mom was best at that. I like to think that since she’s been gone I’ve gotten better but it’s not good enough yet I don’t think. So until then, some things are just easier to write than they are to say in person.

There’s a lot about you I don’t understand. One thing in particular I never could get my head around but Samuel I was always proud of how little shame you had for yourself. It’s not an easy thing to have and you were born with it. That’s something your mom gave you. I remember hearing you talk to Gregory on the phone and apologizing for me. I remember you and Natasha shifting to a whisper when I came in the room.

I didn’t know how to be, Sammy. I didn’t understand you, neither did Gregory. I have a lot to be sorry for. I should’ve been there to support you, I should’ve been some kind of guide for you even though our worlds are so different. I should’ve done better.

I thought I would have the chance with Riley. I liked him. I know you did too. And it’s a tragedy what happened. And you can talk to me about it. You don’t have to lean on Natasha all the time, I’m your dad, I’m here to listen no matter what you have to say. I love you.

Well. Anyway. Enjoy your last month up there. Bring me back a souvenir, it better not be a rock.

Love,

Dad

 

July 10th 1977,

Eric Clapton,

I’m glad you’re so enamored with their enamor (is that even a word?). I hope to be that star-crossed with someone some day. I guess it just wasn’t meant for me and Riley. Or maybe we’re so star-crossed that we uncrossed. I don’t know. Maybe star-crossing isn’t real. But it has to be, because they’re definitely star-crossed. I mean the odds of every bit of the universe clicking into place to make this happen is insane. Makes me wonder if maybe Riley didn’t die after all.

I know he did but I wish he didn’t. That’s really what it is, I wish he didn’t die. Nothing else.

Please! Stop spending money on lunch with Sharon, you have like zero dollars in your bank account! You can’t afford it and more importantly it’ll get boring. She’ll appreciate walks in the park or whatever you enjoy doing with dates (not hard rock).

Love,

Jim Morrison — the only good rocker :)

 

 

‘July 10th 1977,

Dear Dad,

~~Your letter~~ ~~You’re note~~ ~~Thank you for~~ ~~What you said~~

 

“Who you writing this time?” said Bucky over the radio.

“My dad,” said Sam.

“Why?”

“Why?” laughed Sam. “Because he’s my dad.”

“Oo, I’m Sam, I have a good relationship with my father,” mocked Bucky.

“I’m not trying to show it off, you asked,” said Sam.

“I know I know. I’m just jealous.”

Sam stared at his scribbled up note for a few brief moments. “What would you tell your dad if out of the blue one day he told you he loved you for you?”

“I’d check him into a nursing home and check to see if hell froze over. What about you?”

“I don’t know,” said Sam. “I can’t get the words out.”

“What do you mean? Did he say something in his last letter?”

“He said everything.”

“Hm.”

A silence lingered for beat before the static indicated a voice.

“What’re we talkin’ about,” said Steve.

“Sam’s beautiful, wonderful relationship with his loving father. I’m tuning out, I’m gonna shower.” The line went dead before Bucky even finished his words.

“Okay…” said Steve. “Sorry, he just gets a little jealous. Not just you, he’s a little jealous of everyone these days. It’s a lot easier for kids these days…kinda hard to avoid being bitter.”

“You seem to do a pretty good job of it.”

“Eh…I bet that’s what they show on TV but…it’s hard sometimes. People hound me for everything, even the shit I do right. And they get on me for missions the Howling Commandos headed for being too violent or whatever, ya know, as if we weren’t killing nazis. I don’t know. It’s hard to belong to a time period you aren’t from. Hard to avoid getting resentful.”

“Most people like you. And I don’t think anyone cares what happens to nazis or how violent their deaths are.”

“Yeah well, critics are much louder than supporters…but thanks.”

 

 

 

July 10th 1977,

Dear Dad,

Thank you. I love you.

Samuel

 

“Marco.”

“Polo,” panted Bucky.

“Marco,” said Sam.

“Polo,” replied Steve.

“I really feel like this game doesn’t work when we use radios,” said Sam.

“That’s your opinion. Polo,” said Steve.

Sam took a step and winced. The boots Steve gave him were of much better quality than Sam’s boots but, although he couldn’t feel the rough terrain, his feet hadn’t healed all that much since they got cut up three odd days prior. Each step was a little slice of hell.

“I think he’s right Steve,” said Bucky. “It’s…it’s physically impossible to play this game over a radio.”

“Well do you two have any ideas for how we can stave off the boredom? I’m open to suggestions,” snapped Steve.

“Let me check my care packages and see if I have any more beer.”

“Yeah! Cookout! Again!” said Bucky.

“We have to use our cookouts sparingly or even they won’t break the monotony,” warned Steve.

“Shut up, we only have a month left. Cookouts don’t get boring after just one month,” said Bucky. “What’s the verdict Sam?”

Sam spelled out ‘park’ in the lockbox’s padlock and shoved the lid open. One package, no letters. Sam tore at the sloppily taped brown paper and found the beer he requested from Natasha.

“It’s a six pack!” said Sam. “There’s three of us and she sent a six pack!”

“What a cheapskate,” muttered Bucky.

“It’s free beer,” snapped Steve. “Be appreciative.”

“No,” replied Bucky.

Sam tore the rest of the paper off to find a note taped to the top of the cans.

YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE TOLD ME THEY CAN’T GET DRUNK — I’M NOT GONNA PAY ALL THIS MONEY FOR THEM TO STAY SOBER — THESE ARE FOR YOU  
  
---  
  
Sam couldn’t help but smile at that. “She said she’s only paying for my beer since I told her you two can’t get drunk.”

“Snitch!” said Bucky.

“Well I had a friend send me some burgers. So we’re gonna try and figure out how…how to make those on an open fire,” said Steve.

“I thought you said you didn’t have any friends outside of here.”

“I have friends but only one who knows I’m here,” said Steve.

“Alright, I’m tuning out, meet you guys at the creek,” said Bucky.

Sam couldn’t stare at Bucky in confusion, so he stared at his radio.

“Bucky’s not a fan of this friend of mine,” sighed Steve.

“If you don’t mind me commenting,” Sam locked the lockbox back up and began limping towards the creek, “he seems like…the jealous type.”

“He…It’s a long story.”

“Is that a symptom?” said Sam without thinking.

“No, he’s…Listen it’s a long story.”

“Alright, forget I said anything.”

 

 

 

Sam limped his way to the creek. It took too long. So long that he contemplated turning back and giving up. But he’d long since past the half-way point. Turning back would be counterproductive and painful. Sitting down in the middle of the Bighorn wilderness wasn’t an option either. He had to push through to the creekside and enjoy himself.

The last five feet through the thicket were the worst. They were the hardest steps to take, most uneven, and most painful. When he emerged in the clearing, he was seconds away from collapsing in the sand.

“You got here before Steve?” laughed Bucky. “You don’t even have feet today.”

“I was closer, I guess.” He sat the beer in the sand and did the same for himself. Bucky tried and failed repeatedly to get the fire started.

“So, to cook burgers with no grill, I was thinking a sort of hot-rock. Get a big flat rock, make it hot, ya know, with fire, then cook,” said Bucky.

“How innovative,” laughed Sam. “That’s called a grill.”

“I know. And I couldn’t find a thin enough rock that wouldn’t smother the fire. So my next idea was a smoker made out of those palm leaf type things.”

“A smoker? You wanna barbecue out here?” laughed Sam.

“I’ve gotten pretty good at cooking with little to no supplies,” said Bucky.

“That sounds like a not-so-subtle allusion to the war,” groaned Sam. “But I was in war too. So it sounds to me that you were just being a snob about the rations we were given.”

“Well mister-1975, I was at war in the forties. There was a food shortage.”

“You were a Commando.”

“For a year and a half, I was just an enlisted man.” The fire lit. “I was making purses out of sow’s ears professionally.”

“A year and a half huh? Ya know they don’t mention much about your sans-Steve war days in the comics,” said Sam meekly.

“They weren’t as glamorous. Nothing but a lot of cowardice and fear and death and shit. Not exactly the type of propaganda we wanted to send home. 

“You were scared?” said Sam. He knew, somewhere inside of him he knew, that supersoldier or not, war was scary. But consciously, Bucky and Steve were impervious to all of that.

“I got a little more scared when Steve joined up.”

“I know how that feels,” said Sam.

Rustling preceded Steve bursting from the thicket. “Oh you got the fire goin’ already.”

“I’m better at this than you,” said Bucky.

Bucky came through with his cooking engineering to an extent. Steve and Sam shut down the makeshift smoker idea so Bucky made a make shift grill with a few adjustments to his original ‘make a rock really hot’ plan. Steve, as soon as the grill was set up, jumped in the ravine. Bucky pulled his clothes off to do the same.

“You can’t come today,” said Bucky.

“Why?” snapped Sam.

“If you put your bloody feet in this questionable water you’re _definitely going to lose a foot.”_

He was right but Sam didn’t have to be happy about it. So he pouted.

“C’mon, I’ll come back to shore in a minute I just wanna cool off,” said Bucky.

“Fine, I’ll sit here alone, dying, all by myself, alone,” replied Sam.

“Okay,” laughed Bucky before running towards the water. Something about Sam made people immune to his guilt tripping, everyone except Natasha.

He sat on the beach, next to the fire with a beer in his hand, watching Bucky do the backstroke and listening to Steve be his drill sergeant. His younger self would never believe this was where he’d land. After years of tiptoeing around his crushes and crying with Natasha, he’d end up here, in paradise, somewhere he didn’t have to hide or think about it. He could just be. Up until Bighorn, Natasha’s apartment was the only place that held the same qualities, but now he had an entire national park to live in. Bucky swam up to the rock formation where Steve sat, the sun lit them like two demigods. Every muscle in Bucky’s back was visible from Sam’s seat on the beach. The same went for Steve’s chest.

Bucky waded back in from the water and shook off like a dog. Sam took another big gulp of his beer.

“Hungry?” said Bucky. “The grill should be ready.”

“I guess I’m hungry then.”

Bucky unwrapped the package Steve brought and tossed three patties onto his make shift grill. Then he sat. Right next to Sam. Their skin was flush together the entire length of their thighs. Sam wouldn’t say anything about it if Bucky didn’t.

“How’re your feet?”

“Hurt,” said Sam. “They’ll heal, it’s not that bad.”

“What really happened?”

“Long story.”

“We got time.”

Sam sighed and swallowed. “I just…had one of those moments. You know…where you think they’re right behind you. It felt like my boots were dragging me to Hell so…I ran from ‘em.”

“Yeah…that happens sometimes,” said Bucky with a grin.

“I guess,” said Sam. “It felt kinda good to run…Felt freeing.”

“Good. I’m glad.”

“Hey, can I make a small confession?” said Sam. He said it to deflect, to talk about something other than his weird break in sanity. But once it was out there he was begging for it come back in.

“Sure, shoot.”

“I,” most of Sam begged him to stop, and the rest of him had two beers, “I overheard you and Steve on the radio.”

Bucky turned to look at him. It must’ve read clear on Sam’s face what exactly he meant by that since Bucky’s expression changed. He wasn’t sure what emotion it changed to but it did change. “The whole thing?”

“No just…tail end." 

Bucky froze for a few seconds, eyeing Sam the entire time. “So what’d you think?”

Sam sputtered out a few letters but no real words.

“Good.” Bucky kept staring right at him. Kept moving closer, too close. Sam stared back, his cheeks burned, hell his whole face burned. But Bucky didn’t let up. Sam took the last sip of his second beer. “Don’t swallow.”

Bucky said nothing else, and pressed their lips together. Sam froze and let Bucky’s tongue find his, let him siphon the beer from him agonizingly slowly. Most of him wanted Bucky to keep going, so much of him wanted Bucky to never leave this spot. But a smaller, louder part of him shoved Bucky off.

Bucky looked like he expected that, his only reaction was wiping the beer from his mouth.

“Hey,” said Sam.

“Yeah?” replied Bucky, as if nothing happened.

“What the hell was that?” spat Sam.

“I wanted a sip,” said Bucky.

“Listen…whatever…relationship problems the two of you might have, I don’t really wanna get in the middle of it.” Sam pulled their thighs apart and scooted an inch or two away from him. Bucky paid him no mind. 

“It’s not like that.” A smug smile stretched across his face. His gorgeous face.

“He could’ve seen! I don’t want Captain America on my ass because—“

“Sam, do you wanna hear a story?” interrupted Bucky.

“No.”

“You’re gonna. Long long ago, in 1943, Steve and I, through strange and unnatural, maybe even disturbing, circumstances discovered…we like a third.” Bucky’s hand found his and held his fingertips.

“A third what?” Sam knew the answer but he wanted Bucky to say it.

“A third person.” Sam’s eyes flicked to Steve, sunning himself on the rock formation in the ravine. He could buy the two of them being in for each other, he knew how that happened. But how did two men from an age of repression, in the middle of a damn war, just ‘discover’ they liked a third. “We’re accepting applications if you’re interested.”

Sam became hyperaware of the pain in his feet. “Am I drunk?”

“I doubt it.”

“Was…” The question had been on his mind since Steve mentioned her. “Was Peggy your third?”

Bucky let go of Sam’s fingertips. “No. And this is isn’t about who it used to be, we’re not looking for a replacement.”

Bucky’s eyes never left Sam’s. They were piercingly colorless. The grey didn’t obviously lean to blue or green. They were completely blank slates just like Bucky. He was so hard to read, so hard to size up. So much so that, had Bucky not just stolen a sip of beer from his mouth, he might’ve thought the whole thing was a practical joke.

Their eyes stayed locked until Steve waded in from the water. He shook off like a big, blond dog. Sam looked up at him as the sun caught every droplet of water that still clung to him.

“What’s with the face?” teased Steve. “You look like you saw a ghost.”

“I asked him,” said Bucky.

“Asked him wh…” began Steve. He answered his own question. Steve looked from Bucky to Sam in rapid succession, his hands planted firmly on his hips. “So…?”

“Yeah,” said Bucky, scooting a little closer to Sam. “So?”

“I…” said Sam. He had no plan for that sentence. His silence loomed and hung in the air for a few tense seconds. “You guys’re serious?”

Bucky groaned in frustration and in seconds his mouth traced Sam’s neck. It was like he knew that was his weakness. Steve sat across the fire from the two of them, watching. His eyes locked with Sam’s as Bucky’s mouth moved to Sam’s collarbones.

He didn’t look jealous or possessive, or even proud. He just watched with heavy eye lids tracking Bucky and scanning every inch of Sam.

Bucky’s thumb traced Sam’s waistband.

“I’m gonna need help getting back to my tower.”

 

 

 

Steve yanked the last off his clothes off and fell onto Sam’s bed. It was graceless and made Bucky laugh. Sam wasn’t sure he was in the mood for laughing just yet. It still felt like a dream. His cut up feet let him limp to the map table in the center of the room. Was he supposed to strip too? Was someone supposed to establish _something_? Was it all really happening?

He was broken from his reverie by Bucky’s shirt hitting him in the face. “You chicken, Wilson?”

“No!” said Sam, his voice was an octave too high to be taken seriously.

“You wanna just watch or somethin’?” asked Steve.

“No—It’s just been awhile…and there’re three of us.”

“Yeah, the first one’s intimidating,” said Bucky somewhere behind him. “You’ll get the hang of it.”

Sam’s eyes didn’t leave Steve. A lot of emotions coursed through him, too much for him to identify any of them. It was just a wave of emotions that cancelled each other out and made Sam feel everything and nothing all at once. And then Bucky kissed him. Softer and quieter than before. Kinder than before. His hands cradled his face, his metal hand was just cold enough to calm him.

“Do you wanna?” whispered Bucky against his lips. Sam nodded. “We’ll show you. How do you like it?”

“Uh…either, both, I don’t care.”

Bucky silently undressed him, kissing each plane of newly uncovered skin as he went along. Steve watched from the bed with an innocent smile that didn’t fit the situation. Then Bucky took him into his mouth. In one motion. Sam braced himself against the map table and watched Steve laugh.

“Yeah he’s good at that.”

Bucky hummed. Sam let him go for a few more seconds. “Okay—okay! You gotta stop, I’m not gonna last.”

Bucky sat back on his heels and wiped his mouth. “Get on Steve.”

“Oh…right now?” replied Sam. Bucky nodded through his laughter. “Stop laughing!”

“Then stop being such a virgin,” replied Bucky.

Sam ignored Bucky and limped to the bed where Steve waited for him with open legs. He knelt between Steve’s thighs and Steve pulled him down on top of him, locking his ankles behind Sam’s back. God it was enough to end him right there. Steve bucked his hips up and ground against Sam’s stomach.

Sam blindly and desperately kissed any part of Steve he could get to, settling on his neck eventually.

“Steve, where’d you put the lube?” barked Bucky somewhere behind the two of them.

“It’s with my stuff somewhere, just look,” said Steve in Sam’s ear.

He’d only ever been with one. One person, alone, private. It froze him to have someone running errands behind them. It felt like he had an audience almost.

But then the audience had a cold metal hand on Sam’s back. And hot wet lips ran across his shoulder blades. And Steve’s hand reached down and stroked him once, twice, then pushed him in. Sam did the rest of the work from there. Steve was tighter than anyone he’d ever been with, any fist he’d ever made. He all but screamed into the bedding while Steve scratched deep cuts into his back.

“He’s almost too tight isn’t he?” whispered Bucky.

For a moment, maybe too, it was strange and foreign to have Bucky there. Touching and kissing and watching the two of them. But all too quickly, Sam wondered how he ever did any of this without a third.

“Your turn?” asked Bucky.

“My turn?” replied Sam as he rolled his hips deeper still into Steve.

Bucky gripped Sam’s ass with both hands. “Your turn.”

Evidently, Steve understood that a little better and pulled him back down on top. Then Bucky was in him. Slowly at first, letting the sensation establish itself. Sam bit and broke the skin where Steve’s neck met his shoulders. Steve whined.

“It’s okay, Sam, he likes shit like that,” grunted Bucky.

Sam only got weaker from there. Every movement in every direction of every part of his body felt like heaven. It overwhelmed him. He moved blindly, kissed wherever he could, reached for whatever was near and held on. Bucky eventually covered them both like a blanket, squishing them all together and forcing just a little more pleasure from them both.

Steve whispered something to Sam, maybe he screamed it. Sam didn’t hear either way and he didn’t care too. He kissed Steve to shut him up.

Steve saw stars first. He gripped his legs tighter around the two of them. They slipped and slid across his and Bucky’s skin with so much sweat. So much damn sweat. Bighorn was hot enough alone, lying still, in the dead of night. It turned into a sweltering hellscape with Steve and Bucky, two genetically enhanced and heated super soldiers, above and beneath him. But it was too good to notice the heat, the sweat, the dizzyness.

He saw stars second. He damn near clawed out the stuffing of his mattress in the process. Steve clawed up and down his back, somehow that made it even better. He ripped his pillow open.

Bucky was a close third. He bit Sam’s shoulder and collapsed.

Sam had never had that much power behind any act before. So much force and passion and energy. How anyone kept up with them was a miracle. He pressed sloppy kisses to Steve’s smiling cheeks, Bucky did the same to him.

“Bravo, Wilson,” shuddered Steve. Any movement of Sam’s hips set Steve into convulsions. Sam moved his hips just to watch his eyes roll back one more time then his arms gave out. He flopped over on his side.

“Yeah, bravo,” said Bucky, punctuating his words with his hips. “Our last third couldn’t take us both. The only time he did, he got a fever.”

“You just jinxed it,” said Sam. Bucky rolled his eyes and kissed him. Sam was asleep before he pulled away.

 

 

 

He woke hot and uncomfortable. Sweat slicked his entire body but something prevented him from spreading out and cooling off, two other bodies.

The sun was just leaving the horizon, he couldn’t have been out that long. To his left, Steve snored. To his right, Bucky sat up and had his right arm under Sam’s head, and Steve’s head in his hand. Sam glanced up and saw he was glazed over, staring out the window, watching the sky change.

“Your arm asleep?” asked Sam.

Bucky didn’t look away from the sky, just laughed. “Haven’t been able to feel it for about half an hour.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay. I thought you passed out, you fell asleep so quick.”

“You ever fucked yourself? Us mere mortals can’t take it. Steve passed out too, I’m in good company.”

“My serum’s stronger than his,” said Bucky, as if that didn’t turn all of Sam’s comic-based knowledge on its head. “But you did take it like a champ.”

“You gave it like a champ,” laughed Sam. There was an unfilled beat of silence that Sam filled before he thought any of it through. “I haven’t been with anyone since Riley.”

“Think he would’ve cared?”

“I think after the third month of him bein’ dead his ghost’d be giving my number out for me,” said Sam.

“Why’d you wait?” Sam looked up at Bucky again, his eyes were still on the horizon.

“Just…did.”

Steve stirred and rolled over, his arm draped across Sam’s waist and held him tight. Bucky grinned. “Yeah he does that.”

“So…if Peggy wasn’t your third…who was?” asked Sam, racking his brain for any character from the comics who might’ve fit. “One of the commandos?”

“God no. They were like siblings almost…I say almost because ya know…it’s war, sometimes…you get lonely. But they weren’t our third ever. In fact, we kept our whole…situation a secret until a month before I went off that cliff.” Bucky’s arm clenched under Sam’s head. He considered stopping this line of questioning but he was too tired and curious.

“Then who?”

“Howard,” said Bucky. His free hand reached for Sam’s. He stopped looking at the setting sun long enough to find Sam’s hand and fiddle with his fingertips. “It lasted until I died…Then when we both came back he had a wife and a son. But he kissed me again. I’m sworn to secrecy but he did. I don’t know…A lot’s changed. The stuff I thought would stay the same is more different than everything else combined. Some days I wish I would’ve really died…But today’s not one of those.” He squeezed Sam’s hand a little tighter.

“I know what you mean…When I came back…I guess I expected the world to stop and wait for me. I never asked to go, why should I have to miss out on everything while I was gone.”

“Does it ever…get better?”

Sam nodded against Bucky’s chest. “It gets a lot easier. Some days it’s just plain ol’ easy. You haven’t been back that long you just gotta ride it out.” Sam wasn’t sure he believed that but he wasn’t going to tell Bucky there was no hope. Even if, maybe, there wasn’t.

Bucky looked down at him with a half smile. He pressed his lips lightly between Sam’s eyes and turned back to the sunset that was just about done. “Wanna know how it started? The third?”

“Only if you wanna tell,” said Sam. He immediately wondered why the hell he would even hypothetically pass up the chance to know more.

“It might change your opinion of _The_ Captain America.”

“This is a good day for that,” laughed Sam.

“He cheated on me,” said Bucky with a clenched jaw.

“Oh.”

“Yeah…”

“Is that the end of the story or…?” prompted Sam.

Bucky took in a deep breath and let it out slow and steady. “He wasn’t used to all the attention from women. No one but me’d ever looked at him twice, without exaggeration. So…when _Peggy_ showed an interest…”

Sam wasn’t sure how to respond so he didn’t. He just hummed against Bucky’s shoulder. He’d never been cheated on, he could imagine how it felt but he couldn’t know, and he certainly couldn’t offer anything other than empathy to Bucky.

“I found out because Howard made a joke about them getting married or…something like that. Steve told me he was drunk, and then Howard told me he can’t get drunk anymore…It sucked.”

“I was…kinda wondering about the distain you have for Peggy,” said Sam in a low voice. Steve was wrapped around him like an affectionate octopus, it felt wrong to gossip right then and there.

“I like Peggy…I just don’t like Steve talking about her…talking to her still,” said Bucky. Another silence fell. “But, we worked it out with Howard as our mediator because I was so jealous I couldn’t stop screaming. And then we all just fell into bed together. Weird huh?”

“Not weird…Not normal but not weird.”

Bucky laughed and pulled his arm out from under Sam and Steve. “I hate to admit it but the two of you wore me out, wake me up if there’s a fire.” He scooted himself down and closed his eyes. Sam watched him until they both fell asleep.

 

 

 

The next time he woke it was pitch black outside. Given that he’d fallen asleep at sunset, he couldn’t be sure if he’d been out for hours or minutes. But he was guessing hours since Steve was gone. Sam’s eyes scanned the tower for him. They were too tired to focus properly and Sam didn’t spot him for a full minute until his eyes adjusted to both being awake and the darkness.

Sam found him outside on the balcony finally. He was only visible thanks to his blond hair and light skin that just barely stood out against night. He rolled out of Bucky’s grip and limped out to meet Steve.

Steve jumped when the door creaked. Sam stifled a laugh until he shut the door again. “Fuck, you scared me! Why’re you awake?”

“My bed got fifty percent more comfortable and I got suspicious,” said Sam. Steve rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to the mountains. “What’re you doin’ out here?”

“Firewatching I guess.” Steve cracked his knuckles against the railing. “That’s what we’re getting paid for right?”

Sam leant on the railing in the same position as Steve, either subconsciously or coincidentally. “You okay?”

Steve nodded at the sky. Then turned his eyes on Sam. “Are you?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Boots don’t wear out.”

Sam sucked his teeth. “You and Barnes are both really fixated on that.”

“Buck brought it up too?” Steve grinned. “We’re turning into eachother.” He grinned wider still.

“I just…had one of those moments. Where you’re not sure if you’re really back.”

“I know the feeling,” laughed Steve. “It’ll go away.”

“Really?” said Sam.

“No,” replied Steve. “No, you’ll be eighty five years old, nursing home and little kids at your ankles, some punk ass’ll set off a firecracker outside and you’ll be right back. It’s not gonna go away.”

Sam chewed his lip. “Well…that’s just you.”

“Maybe…” Steve turned to Sam and smirked. “C’mon, we should sleep before Bucky sprawls out and we have to set up a sleeping bag.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey :) We've got 2 more chapters to go and they'll be posted really soon now that finals are (almost) over!!

 

 

“You’ve got one letter from home,” said Bucky as he burst through Sam’s door. He threw the letters on the desk and sat in the chair. Sam sat on the bed, rebandaging his feet, while Steve concocted something breakfast-shaped out of what was left of Sam’s allotted supplies. “Shall I read it out loud?”

“No,” groaned Sam. “I’m too tired to argue.”

“Yeah,” Bucky folded his hands behind his head, “that tends to happen the morning after _me_.”

Steve choked on a laugh. Sam rolled his eyes. “I’m pretty sure I’m tired because you took up way more than your third of the bed.”

“Nothing to be embarrassed about. When Steve and I first started he was out for days.”

“Walking up a flight of stairs had the same effect on me back then,” interjected Steve.

“Whatever you have to tell yourself,” teased Bucky.

“HEY!” buzzed the radio. The three of them looked at eachother, trying to figure out who was missing, who would be on the radio. “HEY! Someone better read me or you’re all three fired!”

“Pick it up!” said Sam to Bucky.

Bucky paused for a moment, waiting for the voice to pop up or waiting for someone else to reply to him. “HEY!” screamed the radio again. Bucky picked it up.

“Hello?”

“Who’s this?!” shouted the man on the radio.

“Eh—This is John Johnson,” said Bucky. Sam cocked his head but Steve didn’t flinch.

“You in the southern tower?!”

“Not…currently, but that’s my tower,” said Bucky.

“You had _one_ job out here, Johnson. Watch. Fires. You’ve got a rager in your quadrant, so big _I_ had to report it!” spat the man.

“Oh shit—is it okay?”

“The crop dusters put it out about twenty minutes ago no thanks to you—and the two stooges who also didn’t see the enormous plume of smoke! You’re not gettin’ paid to fuck off for three months, this is a real job with real stakes!”

“I’m sorry,” said Bucky. There was no indication of a reply coming any time soon. They all three turned too look out the southern window for the plume of smoke that was no longer there. However, it still tainted the mid morning sky. “Fuck…”

“Could’ve happened to any of us,” said Sam.

“It happened to all of us,” said Bucky. “None of us saw it, they had to see it on the aerials.”

“Either way, nothing happened,” said Sam.

Bucky looked at him with an expression that looked more like anger than it did frustration. He could understand frustration at not noticing the first real fire of the summer but anger made no sense. It wasn’t anyone’s fault…kind of.

“So John Johnson?” asked Sam, hoping to deflect.

“We used pseudonyms obviously. He’s John Johnson and I’m Harold Kramer,” said Steve.

“You don’t look like a Harold.”

Bucky stood too abruptly. “I’m gonna go back to my tower.” He left with no objections from Sam and Steve who watched him go. Sam bewildered, Steve still cooking as if nothing happened.

“What’s up his ass? It’s embarrassing but nothing bad happened,” said Sam.

“You’ve got your boots, Bucky’s got his work. Taking things like this a little too seriously helps him take other things a little less seriously I guess.”

He and Steve ate together. It wasn’t particularly good, it tasted like what he expected someone from the thirties would cook. The company made the bland food worth while.

 

 

 

June 20th 1977

Dear Jimmy Morrison,

You okay? I don’t remember what I sent you when you told me about Cap and Barnes but I remember a lot of joyous all-capitals for like two paragraphs. I expected a letter back with a little more umph. Instead I got a reply about star-crossing and Riley.

If Bighorn is making it worse, Sam, I swear to God and also Jesus and all the apostles (disciples?) and also Jesus’s mom and dad (adoptive dad) that I’ll drive down there and steal you back and pay whatever legal repercussion there is. I encouraged this whole thing because I thought it would make you a little more okay with being home, a little happier maybe, but if it’s just making you remember Riley — and if their relationship is just making you remember what you lost I’ll come get you. Say the word ASAP.

By the way, I’m sure it’s no big deal, but the Shoshone has been erupting lately. I know you’re in Bighorn but Shoshone’s not far and, well, you’re there to watch fires so you must be close to the front line fires. I know I’m starting to sound like your dad but is it still safe up there? You know you can’t outrun a bush fire. They go faster than cars.

Love you to the moon and back,

Mama Bear

 

 

June 25th 1977,

Mama Bear,

I’m okay! I promise! It’s hard to gauge the tone of a letter, but you don’t need to come get me I promise. In fact I have a little something to tell you. I’ll, once again, give you a chance to guess what it is so take a little breather and throw out your best theories.

ALL WRONG! Maybe. I think you might’ve guessed this one. Actually no, there’s no way. Anyway, I……drumroll please…….slept with them both.

Yes, I know what you’re thinking. “What the fuck”. But this is the fuck: they like a third and they like me. Apparently it’s an established thing between the two of them that sometimes the two of them can be the three. And this kind of place really bonds you quick. Real quick. _Real quick_. You’re probably wondering about the logistics, I sure as hell was. Unfortunately I don’t want those gory details in writing so remind me to tell you when I get back.

And I know what you’re thinking now. “How”. Well here’s how. Bucky (that’s what his close friends and lovers call him) kissed me. Just out of the blue. (He’s really good at it). I kinda panicked because I thought Steve (Captain America to the layman) was going to disembowel me for touching him. But turns out they were building up to ask me — Can you believe that! _They_ were nervous to ask _me!_

I promise, if I wanted to go home I’d get in my own car and start driving. And if I see a fire big enough I’ll leave and let the whole forest burn down in my absence. Don’t worry about me. I handled war, I can handle a vacation.

Love you to the moon and back and then back to the moon and then back again,

\- Poppa Bear

 

 

 

“I got through talking with the head ranger,” crackled Bucky’s voice over the radio. He’d tuned out for a good few hours. Sam was sweating his ass off half way through his usual hike when he tuned back in.

“Did he say anything?” asked Steve.

“Just that, if it happens again we’re fired,” said Bucky.

“They won’t fire us,” panted Sam, “they’d need replacements.”

“Well, that might not be a problem,” said Bucky. “According to the ranger I talked to, the overall fires are getting worse.”

“How do you mean?” asked Steve.

“I mean, they’re getting worse. More fires, bigger fires, faster fires. The drought this year is feeding the wildfires a little more than they anticipated.”

“That’s what my friend, Natasha, just said in her letter.” Sam wheezed and sat down before continuing. “She said Shoshone, the park next to us, is going up really fast.”

“It doesn’t effect us,” said Steve. “I mean, if it gets too big they tell us to leave, if it doesn’t we leave a week later than we might have. It’s fine.”

“Can we stop talkin’ shop? I have one single beer left, either of you wanna watch me drink it by the creek?”

There was a pause that broke when Bucky’s radio crackled in along with his laughter. “I’m in, I’ll be down once I finish my rounds.”

“I’m out of food but I still have these marshmallows from when we first got here. I’ll bring ‘em.”

“Alright, see you two in an hour.”

 

 

 

Sam, for once, got to the creek first. He set up the beginnings of a fire and left the rest for Bucky. His arm was metal, it never got tired so he could do the work. Then he took two big steps into the creek water, boots and all, splashed the chilly water onto his face and poured it down his neck.

Summer was drawing to a merciful close but the heat wasn’t. It took everything Sam had to not wade into the water and float for the rest of the day.

“Overheating?” said Steve somewhere behind Sam. Sam could barely hear him over the pervasive pounding in his ears.

“Aren’t you?” Sam scooped more water onto his neck. “You and Barnes are like furnaces, how’re you taking this?”

Steve appeared at his side, boots and all, and splashed water onto his face just as Sam had. “I don’t know how much more I can take, truthfully. Back in the war, me and Buck were invincible partly because the cold weather wasn’t that much of an issue. Never thought about the reverse too much.”

“Guess you can’t really call into the tower and tell ‘em why you need to go home,” laughed Sam.

“Exactly.” Steve sat in the water. “It’s tempting though.”

Sam watched Steve’s muscular legs bob to the top of the water. He’d been between those. Strange thought for a strange situation. His wandering mind was interrupted just as it got off track when Bucky emerged from the thicket. He looked wet, in fact he was wet. His hair was drenched and falling into his face, his clothes were two shades darker.

Without a word, he walked into the water up to his shoulders.

“Alright, Buck?” wheezed Steve.

“Peachy,” spat Bucky.

“Is it just me or is it hotter today?” said Sam.

“It’s the fires. They’re getting worse. Making it hotter. Or maybe the heat’s making the fires worse. Who’s to say.”

“It feels like a sauna,” groaned Sam, “I can actually grab the air.”

“No fire today,” said Bucky gesturing to the setup Sam had made. “If I get near anymore heat my whole nervous system’s gonna give out.”

“That’s fine, the marshmallows I brought melted together and look like a tumor,” said Steve.

 

 

 

They swam for the rest of the day. Floated was a better word. Neither took the time to disrobe so they floated together, fully dressed, in the water that was slowly becoming lukewarm. Sam fell asleep clutching the exposed crop of the rock formation they usually sat on. Bucky fell asleep floating on the water with his metal arm around Sam’s ankle, and Steve stayed awake to make sure neither of drowned or drifted into the next state.

When they woke the heat was no better. They three waded out of the water. The breezes that occasionally kissed their sopping wet clothes were blessings, and the clothes themselves sucked away a lot of the heat too, but most of it stayed with them. All three too hot to speak, too drained to move, to tired to care.

“I got an idea,” mumbled Bucky.

“What ’s ’t?” replied Steve.

“Let’s just make camp here so we don’t have to walk back in the heat,” said Clarkson.

Sam’s eyes wouldn’t open but he cocked his head. “What’d you say?”

“I said let’s sleep here, I’m sure it’ll be fine,” said Clarkson.

Sam sat bolt upright and looked around. Vietnam flanked him left, right, and center. Danger flanked him left, right, and center. He was so sure, so sure he was home but the sweltering woods that surrounded him begged to differ. His lungs worked overtime as his heart prepared him. Prepared him for something. For sleep or for combat.

“Sam?”

He knew, he _knew_ stopping to camp was a bad idea. He _knew_ it. But he couldn’t argue with his CO, not the way Clarkson could and there they were, camping out in the open like sitting ducks. Speaking up meant getting punished so he didn’t, but he’d never sleep. Not like this. Not with only God separating him from the enemy. He couldn’t get close enough to his rifle. In fact. In fact he couldn’t even get near it.

In fact he couldn’t see it.

In fact it wasn’t there.

“Sam!” said Steve, waving a hand in front of him. “Sam?”

Bucky, propped up on his elbows, cocked his head. “You okay?”

Sam glanced around. Clarkson was gone. Maybe he’d never been there. “Yeah I just…”

“It happens,” said Steve.

“What happens?” said Sam, wiping the sweat from his forehead.

“Those…moments. Suddenly, you’re back and you don’t know how you got there,” said Steve. Bucky looked at him blankly, his mind must’ve been racing judging by the stare he gave Steve. Sam felt similarly.

“I…thought I had my last one,” said Sam. He thought, hoped, that his last breakdown was convincing himself he’d set a landmine off in Big Horn. He ditched his boots, he ran barefoot through rocky terrain, all signs pointed to being cured.

“There isn’t a last one,” said Steve. “They get less, they get farther apart, but the minute you think they’re gone for good they pop back up.”

“Yeah?” said Bucky. Steve looked at him with eyes full of sympathy and nodded.

“Yeah.”

“You know,” Sam laid back down in the sand and gritted his teeth, his hands still shook, “my therapist never mentioned there not being a cure.”

“Would you have kept going if he did?”

Sam’s heart wouldn’t stop racing. “I guess not.”

“It’s not the end of the world,” said Steve. “It’ll bet much better than it is now, for both of you.”

“How often does it happen to you?” panted Sam.

Steve shrugged. “Comes and goes.”

“A number, Steve,” demanded Bucky.

Steve looked between the two of them and sighed. “I don’t know, once every few months?”

“Yeah?” Bucky sat up and wiped the sweat from his forehead. “That’s it?”

“How often is it for you?” asked Steve.

Bucky locked eyes with the middle distance. “Once a day usually. But better since I got out here.” Bucky’s foot tapped Sam’s knee. “What about you?”

“I hadn’t had an issue for weeks. Then I got out here and it’s like I never left.”

“Why’d you come then?” asked Bucky.

“There’s a reason,” said Sam, unsure if there really was one. “If nothing else I got you two out of it.”

Steve grinned as wide as his face would allow, and Bucky blushed. God, he made him blush, what an idiot. An adorable, beet-red idiot.

“Don’t get sappy,” said Bucky, trying to distract from his bright red cheeks.

“He secretly loves it,” added Steve. Bucky kicked him. “The first time I told him I loved him he called me all kinds of names and gave me a noogie.”

“Wow, what a hopeless romantic,” teased Sam.

“It’ll grow on you.” Steve pinched Bucky’s cheek. Sam’s mind lingered on that implication of a future with them. “Where’s that one beer you had left, I was looking forward to seeing tipsy-Sam.”

“I think it probably boiled in my backpack by now.”

“I wanna get the hell out of here, but I also never wanna leave,” said Bucky.

Bucky laid back down to avoid elaborating on that sentiment, one that they all three shared. The scenery was beautiful but the hikes were starting to make their joints hurt, the heat was drying them out and wearing them out, the boredom was eating away at them, but the three of them wanted to stay the three of them.

Sam watched Bucky claw his hands deeper and deeper into the sand. The three of them, the whole summer, could only ever be a glimpse. A short moment in time that they’d look back on and ache over. But it couldn’t be distilled or lengthened or reproduced. The situation, the dynamic, it was too unique to transfer over to D.C.. It would end when summer did. Maybe that was okay, maybe it wasn’t. Either way, nothing would change that fact. That this was all they’d get together.

“Oh shit,” grumbled Bucky, jolting Sam from his premature nostalgia.

“What?”

“Is that smoke?” said Bucky.

A plume bigger than a house rose on the opposite side of the creek, a good thousand yards away but big enough to see. The three of them stared at the plume for a few seconds of stunned horror before all three scrambled for their radios.

“Tower! Tower, this is Sam Wilson, over!” screamed Sam into his radio. Bucky and Steve gave similar messages. They all waited in silence for a response.

“Wilson, this is Tower, “ replied Tower.

“Big—Big fire!” was all Sam could get out. “Big fire. Rager. It’s—we’re in—that area between all three towers, but the fire looks like it’s out of our ranges, to the north! Over!”

“Okay, noted. You, and the other watchers are to temporarily evacuate to the southernmost tower until further notice,” said Tower. “Effective immediately. Over and out.”


	9. Chapter 9

 

“If we die on the job, they get in a huge legal _issue_ ,” said Steve. “If it’s too dangerous they’ll evacuate us for real.”

Sam paced the length of Bucky’s tower. As a precaution, he and Steve had taken their few possessions from their own towers and moved them into Bucky’s. His tower was the furthest from the ravine and therefore from the biggest fire in the area, the northern fire. Four days of living on top of each other was getting to them. The first night was fine, pleasurable, passionate and the second morning that featured a shower shared between the three of them was fun for the moment, but sharing a one person room with two others would get under anyone’s skin. Their irritability and anxiety was riding even higher thanks to the intimidating plumes of smoke that continued to mar the sky no matter how many fires they reported.

According to the Tower, the northern fire was a contained burn and if it ever hopped the creek they’d be flown out if necessary. But Sam didn’t trust that. Maybe he was biased, maybe his memories of a promised evacuation were tainted by his regimental brother’s deaths, or maybe the Tower was lying about the severity of the situation. Nothing Steve or Bucky said would settle his fried nerves.

“They’re still having us do rounds, Sam, if they were _really_ worried they’d tell us not to leave the tower,” said Bucky. Sam continued pacing and biting his thumb.

When he didn’t respond, Sam heard Bucky painstakingly climb out of bed to Sam. Bucky staggered over and held his face firmly in his hands. “Sam, stop freakin’ out! We’re fine, I promise.”

“If you say so,” sighed Sam.

“C’mon we’ve gotta go on our rounds.”

“You can’t outrun bush fire,” warned Sam. “If you see it it’s already too late it’s like outrunning a car—”

“I know.” Bucky pressed his lips sloppily against Sam’s to shut him up. “Let’s go.”

 

 

 

Sam kept his eyes on the sky. The biggest plume of smoke was still from the northern fire which refused to die down. But a few more had sprouted up around them. Those were reported and doused by crop dusters early, they never lingered. Of course, Sam still found it harder to breathe when a new plume marred the sky.

“Anything on your end?” asked Steve.

“Not yet,” replied Bucky.

“I got a little one,” replied Sam. “It doesn’t look mean.”

“Be careful,” said Steve.

“I will be.” Sam followed the small plume. The heat still penetrated every cell of his body, but they were nearing a week of the intense heat. There was no avoiding it and no adapting, he could only deal with the sweat and fatigue. A skill he first honed a few years back already.

He hadn’t reached his usual level of energy in days and it showed in how he traversed the landscape. He was more open to sliding rather than walking, more prone to taking breaks, more prone to estimating the location of fires instead of getting close enough to give the true coordinates. There were just too many to keep up with.

His feet felt like cement blocks every step he took. They dragged underneath him, heavy and hot. A step, and another, and another, and the fourth tripped him up. He landed rough, among uneven earth, and skinned his forearms to hell. He got his feet back under himself and looked back to see if anything had actually tripped him or if his body was just giving into the hellish heat. And there they sat.

His boots.

Of course. Of course it was those damn boots sitting on that damn trip wire. His fall knocked them off of their wire, the bomb buried underneath them would explode at any second. But Sam didn’t have the energy to move or care. He just stared at the boots for a few silent seconds before bringing the radio to his lips.

“Tower, this is Wilson,” said Sam.

“Wilson, this is Tower. Over.”

“Southern quarter, small. Over.”

“Roger.”

Sam coughed through the thick air and sat up. His fingertips ran over the familiar seams and scratches in the leather. They were a little worse off thanks to their weeks sitting untouched in the wilderness but they were still his. He tied the laces together and draped them over his shoulders.

 

 

 

“Two more in the western quarter,” wheezed Steve. “God I feel like I have asthma again, it’s so fucking hot.”

“Two more?” said Bucky.

“That’s not good.” Sam stopped bothering filtering out the worry in his voice.

“Sam, it’s okay. How many did you get?”

“Three,” replied Sam.

“Well…they said if the big one jumps the creek they’ll have us leave.” Bucky’s crackling static voice was more comforting than Sam would admit.

“Tower said to keep one of our radios on their frequency just in case,” said Steve. “I can if you want.”

“No. I will,” said Sam.

“It’ll only worry you more,” said Bucky.

“No, it’ll make me feel better. I’m tuning out, stay safe,” said Sam.

“Alright bye, Sam,” said Bucky.

“Bye, love you,” said Steve.

“B…bye,” said Sam. God, all he could say was ‘bye’. All he could say to _that_ was ‘bye’. How articulate, how inspired, how revolutionarily insightful, how deep, how— “Tower, Tower, come in Tower. Over.”

“Tower, over.”

“Southwestern quarter, Tower.”

“On it, Wilson.”

“Tower, when do we evacuate. Over.”

“I told you, Wilson. That fire jumps the ravine I’ll let you know. It’s not close yet. You don’t have cause to worry. Over.”

“I read,” Sam’s dry throat forced him to struggle through his words. “I read somewhere that wildfires can travel faster than cars. Over.”

“They can but there is a significant amount of beach and life-less terrain on either side of the _ravine_. The sand and mud and _water_ will slow it down long enough for us to warn you and for you to get to your respective cars. Over.”

“So—So once we get the alert that the fire jumped how long do we have to pack and go? Over.” Sam’s blood pressure needed the answer more than he did.

“Oh, no. You need to pack now and be ready to go when it’s time. You’ll have thirty minutes at most to safely exit. Over.”

“Over and out.” Sam’s hands shook as they switched the channel on the radio. He was prone to shaking when he was on the ground. In the air with Riley he was an ace, an anxiety-free machine, but he’d never been good on the ground. Never. “Buck—Steve, you there?”

“Right here,” said Steve through a cough.

“Copy,” replied Bucky, his voice was more serious than it had been just moments ago.

“Pack now. Tower said we’ll have a max of thirty minutes to get out once the fire jumps the ravine.”

“Are they sure it’ll jump?” asked Steve.

“It’s gonna jump,” said Bucky. “They wouldn’t have figured out the timing of our escape if it wasn’t gonna jump.”

“Go pack. Everything I need is already at Bucky’s tower. I’ll keep you guys posted.”

Sam clutched his radio in one hand and his dwindling supply of water in the other. His first day in ‘Nam, hours after he jumped out the helicopter and into Hell, he was traversing a burning wilderness with a wet towel wrapped around his nose and mouth. It helped with the smoke but the fear still got in him, deep in his lungs, then his bones. His first day his adrenaline, his fear, carried him far enough not to be picked off by the Vietcong. The guys behind him weren’t always so lucky, they should’ve been faster.

But this fire was not the Vietcong. He couldn’t dodge a scope or a good-armed soldier, he couldn’t even shamefully rely on the ineptitude of his fellow draftees to save him. The fire didn’t care. The fire had more power than any soldier could hope for and it would use it without discretion.

Sam wrapped his sweat soaked shirt around his head as a reflex to the smoke appearing in the sky no matter which way he turned. The smoke wasn’t close enough to get in him yet, but Sam kept the shirt around his neck anyway.

 

 

 

They slept in shifts. It was coming and none knew when. Someone had to be ready when it did. Sam took a shower during his. His radio’s volume was as high as it could be. No messages came through for eight straight nights. On the eighth night he turned the volume back down to a normal volume and stopped letting his fear overpower him when he saw the glowing horizon. Instead he saw the beauty of it.

Dangerous, sure, but beautiful. The night was never meant to be so bright. The tree line practically breathed as the fire continued its rampage.

“You know staring at it isn’t gonna let you know if it jumps,” said Steve. Sam didn’t flinch when he heard him. Some part of him was on high alert constantly now. Steve bursting out unannounced on the balcony wasn’t even close to getting a reaction from him anymore. A leftover symptom maybe. He’d never fully relaxed over there either. It took months to shake that habit but it made sense to be so numb it in the Vietnamese jungle as well as the burning wilderness of Bighorn.

“It’s kind of…interesting to watch,” said Sam. Steve joined him and leant on the balcony’s railing.

“Bucky’s not convinced it’s gonna jump anymore. He thinks it would’ve done it by now. Thinks the planes got it.”

“I’m leaning that way myself now.” Sam stretched out his tired back.

“I think they’ll still send us home early though.”

“Probably.” Sam sighed into the smokey air. “I’ll miss it…weirdly enough.”

“I will too. I don’t think I’ll ever have anything like this again…” Steve sighed just as deep and shaky as Sam. “But, even if it was just for a little while, I’m glad it happened.”

“Me too,” said Sam.

Steve pressed a kiss to the corner of Sam’s mouth. “I’m gonna get some sleep before my shift. See you in the morning.”

“Night, Steve.”

“Lets…Lets get together. Down at the ravine. We’ll give Big Horn a proper goodbye. It’ll be very nostalgic and emotional and all that sappy shit,” said Steve with a grin.

“You wanna have another beach day right next to the fire?” laughed Sam.

“Hey, we’ll know exactly when it jumps the ravine from there,” replied Steve. “Night, Sam.”

 

 

 

Two letters from home. Sam could guess what they were about. Natasha would have a few words to say about his threesome, who wouldn’t. And his father had no doubt written to tell him about the fires he just got done putting out the week before. Sam stuffed them in his backpack and continued towards the ravine.

“You almost there?” said Steve over the radio.

“Yeah, the smokes gone down so I can’t really tell if the fire receded but I think we’re good,” said Sam.

“It’s been burning for over a week and hasn’t jumped, we’re fine,” said Bucky. “Did your friend send more beer, I wanna get you drunk again. I think you’ll spontaneously break into song this time.”

Sam scoffed. “I’m lucky I got my mail, I’m not gonna push my luck and ask for my packages.”

“I guess they’d be pretty mad if we started a fire to cook the last of the hotdogs, huh?” laughed Steve.

Sam wheezed his way to the top of the final hill before the steady and relaxing decline towards the ravine. Bucky and Steve laughed at each other over the radio while Sam fought for every last breath. God he hated hiking. He reached the top after a century of climbing up the relatively slight incline.

There was the thicket, the beach, the ravine, the opposite bank, and the fire. Right there. The smoke was thinner than it had been. Sam stared into the depths of the impossibly hot fire for an answer and came up empty.

“Uh, guys,” said Sam. “It’s…gonna jump.”

“What?” Bucky’s voice sounded more concerned than it had all week.

“It’s—It’s moving,” said Sam. A foot. It must’ve grown a foot since he started staring at it. It was no more than thirty yards from the opposite bank. And he was just staring. He made no moves to run he just watched it. Like his body had already accepted defeat.

“I’m radioing Tower,” said Bucky.

“Sam! If it’s moving head back to us!” said Steve with too much urgency.

“I will,” said Sam with too much nonchalance.

Sam turned on his heel and walked. He walked for a few yards until his feet sped up, and up and up and up and he ran. He ran from the fire. Like he didn’t have enough time to get away. The heat was right at his back. Like it was reaching out with a firey arm to grab Sam and drown him in the blaze. He ran faster.

“Tower …aid…got…ge…’t,” crackled Sam’s radio. Every time it hit his leg the signal went out. He wouldn’t be able to hear anything while he ran unless he stopped to unhook it from it’s holster. Damned if he’d stop. He kept going as fast as his legs would take him until the tower in the distance got big enough to climb.

He took the stairs two, three at a time and burst into in his tower. His tower. His. Tower.

“Sam?! Sam where are you?!” asked Steve over the radio.

“I’m here,” panted Sam. “I…I went to the wrong tower.”

“Bucky’s radio cut out. It…I don’t know it’s just not working or something.”

“What—Where was he last?” Sam scanned the room one more time, he had everything he needed he was sure. His picture of Riley, his letters, his clothes, they were all in Bucky’s tower, but he still wasted time, he still scanned before bounding back down the stairs.

“He was near the ravine, not much father than you but I don’t know where because his fucking radio,” Steve took a breath, a labored and tired breath.

“He’ll turn up,” said Sam. “He’ll meet us at the tower.”

His lungs were on fire after his sprint to Bucky’s tower, on the verge of popping almost. He took the steps up much slower. The fire hadn’t jumped yet, the rangers hadn’t radioed in to get them out. But Sam could still feel it lapping at his collar, threatening to swallow him up.

Drenched in sweat and anxiety and adrenaline, he burst through the tower door and interrupted Steve pacing nervously. “Any word from him?” asked Sam.

Steve strapped on his pack and shook his head. “He likes to make me nervous.”

“We’ve still got time before the fire jumps, keep radioing him.”

“Bucky…Bucky? Come in, asshole,” said Steve into the radio. Similar phrases repeated in the background as Sam accounted for all of his most prized possessions. There weren’t many. The clothes he didn’t need were on the floor of the tower, his picture of Riley was safe and deep in his pack along with his father’s letters. He hadn’t brought much and he wasn’t leaving with much.

Sam helped Steve pack too. He was distracted and worried and dropping every other thing he tried to shove into Bucky’s pack. All they’d brought were clothes, it made sense since the thing most important to them was each other. “He’s not answering.”

“Well—”

“Johnson, Kramer, Wilson, come in,” said a ranger over the radio. Sam and Steve stared at each other blankly. “Come in!”

Sam scrambled for his radio. “This is Wilson, Tower, over.”

“Wilson, the fire jumped, bail. Over.”

“Wait!” said Steve. “Johnson’s still out there his radio’s not responding! Over!”

“Last known location?” asked the ranger.

“I don’t know. The northern quarter? Over,” said Steve.

“We’ll send out a chopper, that’ll be able to spot him. Wilson, Kramer, both of you get gone. Confirm your exit at the first checkpoint on the road out. Over and out.”

Sam and Steve stared at their radios in silence. Sam awaited more instructions that would never come. He wanted to ask if they could stay and wait for Bucky to be found but he already knew the answer.

“Go,” said Steve.

“What? Hell no, I’m not leaving without Bucky—” began Sam.

“He’ll be okay, so will I,” said Steve.

Sam resisted the urge to smack him. He stammered and gestured wildly to the fire raging just past the tree line. “I’m not leaving until I know he’s okay, end of story!”

“Sam!” Steve stood and planted his hands on Sam’s shoulders. “It’ll be fine. Bucky’s gonna get airlifted out of here, wherever he is, and I’m gonna run like a motherfucker to the car and drive outta here at the last second. And I can do that, because I’m full of cells that regenerate exponentially faster than regular peoples.”

“Don’t pull the super-serum card on me!” Sam shook his hands off his shoulders. “Captain America or not, you can’t get burned alive!”

“I got frozen alive!”

“Anyone can do that! …I think!” said Sam.

“I promise we’ll all three be fine, but I can’t guarantee that if I have to help you get out of here when it gets rough!” said Steve.

“I’m a soldier too, jackass! A soldier who’s way more used to heat and fire and explosives than you! If anyone is qualified to be the last man out it’s me! You get gone and _I’ll_ wait for Bucky’s chopper!”

“It’s not about being the last man out Sam, it’s about who’s got the best odds and among regular people it might be you but I’m all fucked up with the serum! It’s easier for me and for Bucky, you should go while you can!” screamed Steve.

“Fuck that, I’m not gonna lose you too!” screamed Sam even louder. A beat of silence filled the tower. Steve wrapped his arms as tight as he could around Sam and his pack. Sam did the same. They were both slick with sweat and hard to get a good grip on but they held on. “I’m not going.”

“Please,” whispered Steve. “I can’t lose you both.”

“So you admit,” a lump in Sam’s throat erased any authority his voice might’ve carried, “you admit there’s a chance one of you’s not coming out.”

“It’s slim, Sam. We’ve got another…twenty five minutes before the fire hits us. In all likelihood, you’ll drive off and ten minutes later I’ll follow right under Bucky’s helicopter.”

“And if that doesn’t happen?” said Sam into Steve’s ear.

“It will. Please, Sam. For me. I can’t handle having two hands on the wheel.”

Sam pulled away. “How do you think I feel? I’m not leaving here without you two.”

“I’ll pay you the twenty bucks I have in my wallet,” said Steve with a wry smile.

“I’m staying.”

Steve stared at him, smirked, and pressed his lips to Sam’s. Again and again. “I love you, Sam.”

“And also with you,” replied Sam. Steve’s lips pressed against Sam’s cheek as he fought a hysterical laugh. “Shut the hell up, you know what I meant!”

“I know,” another kiss. “I know.” And another.

“Does Bucky know?” asked Sam.

“Tell him when we get out of here, he never knows anything ’til you tell him,” said Steve.

“Set the timer,” said Sam.

The two of them stood on the balcony and waited for the distinct wailing of the helicopter. Twenty five minutes remaining. No helicopter. The fire hadn’t passed the tree line.

Twenty minutes left. The fire ate the tree line. No chopper. Fifteen minutes left. The fire lapped at the edges of Steve’s tower. Steve wrung his hands and Sam’s grip on the wood of the railing tightened. They didn’t exchange any words, what would they even say. Ten minutes left, Sam’s tower sparked. No chopper. Tower had stopped answering their desperate pleas for a chopper to be sent. They were brushed off and told there would be one there shortly. Shortly wasn’t fast enough.

“You should go,” said Steve.

“Like hell,” replied Sam.

“I mean it. You need to leave. We’ll all be fine but we’ll be more fine if there’s only one of us on the ground to worry about.”

“Then you leave and I’ll stay,” said Sam.

“We both know it’s better for me to stay.”

Sam watched the fire rise and fall and spread.

“Sam…it’s not like Riley—”

“Don’t talk about him.”

“It’s not. You’re not leaving a man behind, you weren’t then and you aren’t now. You shouldn’t feel guilty.”

“If I shouldn’t feel guilty, then why aren’t you coming with me?! You’re only staying to make sure Bucky gets out, you’re not even doing anything why don’t you and I go together?!”

“Because…Because…Because I’m his ride home,” said Steve finally.

“That the best you could come up with?”

“Sam, please! Leave! I have to know at least one of you is okay!”

“I want the same thing!”

“Only one of us can have it!”

“Why should it be you?!”

“Sam you have to get out of here unscathed, you’ve got family at home! They need you more than you need us!” screamed Steve.

Sam took two deep breaths. His father’s desperate voice begging him to leave at the first sight of a bushfire screamed from the back of his mind. He could do it to himself, but not his father, not Natasha. “Okay. I’ll go but you gotta promise—”

Steve silenced him with a kiss, harder than he’d ever kissed him before. “I’ll be careful, Sam, I promise, now hurry!”

“I’ll see you.”

“I’ll see you too.”

The gravity of the spreading fire hit Sam only when he made the decision run to his car. He didn’t even have time to look back for one lingering image of Steve on the balcony. He ran like the terrified soldier he’d once been, reminding himself with every slide and jump and rolled ankle that he couldn’t do anything anymore.

He couldn’t charge into the fire and carry Bucky out on his back. His presence wouldn’t help Bucky, nothing he did would help Bucky. He had to accept that no matter how close he flew or how fast he dove, Bucky was lost and Sam wasn’t the one to find him. Though there was nothing left for him to do to help Bucky, but plenty left he could do to help his father.

His car felt miles away, maybe it was. But when it appeared on the horizon, Sam damn near cried in relief. He fished his keys out of his pack as he ran, no easy feat. His hands shook violently in his many attempts to unlock his car. But he did it. He tossed his pack in, turned over the engine, and threw it in reverse.

And he paused. For a moment. For a brief moment, he just watched it burn. A brief moment of listening to the eerie roar.

That roar was cut by the distinct whirring of a helicopter somewhere overhead. Sam couldn’t see it but he heard it. And that was enough.

 

 

 

Sam stopped at a rest stop for gas. It was his first stop of many on the drive back to Washington. He walked inside and got an armful of cheap snacks to tide him over until he got home. He spilled them out onto the counter where a teenage girl rang him up.

“Do y’all have a phone I can borrow?” asked Sam.

“We got a payphone outside,” said the girl without looking up. “Not allowed to let people use our phone.”

Sam handed her two dollar bills to break and headed out to the payphone. Three quarters in and he just barely remembered the phone number. It’d been months without dialing. It rang, and it rang, and it rang. And it didn’t go through. Natasha not picking up meant she was at his apartment. So he called his own number. He barely remembered that one too.

“The number you have dialed is no longer in service,” said a voice. So Sam had forgotten his own fucking number. Perfect.

He fished out a few more quarters to make a last ditch effort in calling his father. While the phone rang he briefly wondered if his dad would be at work, he wasn’t sure what day of the week it was. Didn’t seem to matter in Bighorn.

“Hello?” said his dad.

“Dad.”

“Samuel!” screamed his dad. “Where are you—Is it okay—I’ve been tuned to the Wyoming news and it sounds—”

“I’m fine dad,” replied Sam. “I did have to evacuate, but I promised I’d leave if it got to bad and I did.” Eventually.

“Where’re you callin’ from, kid?”

“Gas station on the way back. I’ll see you in a day or two.”

“Okay, okay…Boy, you had me worried for awhile there. Didn’t reply to my letter…though I guess that’s mostly the fire’s fault.”

“I know. I’m sorry,” said Sam. “Listen, dad, I…I wanna talk to you more.”

“Put more quarters in.”

“No,” said Sam with a shy laugh. “I mean…I just wanna talk more. In general. To you. In specifics. I wanna be better friends.”

“I’d like that,” choked out Sam’s dad. “And—I’ve got a roast. A big one like Mama used to make us on Christmas. I bought it for when you came back.”

“Since when did Mama give you the recipe?”

“She didn’t, I’m just guessin’ with the marinade. If it comes out bad, just lie and tell me you like it.”

“I will. I’ll see you in a few days.”

“Okay. I’ll be here.”

“Love you, Dad.”

“Love you too, Samuel. Drive safe—pull over if you need sleep!”

“I will, I promise. I gotta go, I’m gettin’ a warning for more quart—”

Dial tone almost deafened Sam before he could finish his sentence. He hung up and scooped his remaining quarters into his palm.

‘And in other news the fires in the Shoshone and Bighorn national parks are growing according to park officials. Shoshone firewatchmen evacuated six nights ago, while Bighorn is still in progress on that front. According to Bighorn officials, only parts of the park require evacuation and firewatchmen are needed now more than ever. However, Shoshone has chosen not to take that risk and has evacuated the entire in-forest staff until further notice. For obvious reasons, the parks will remain closed to the public until the fires have stopped appearing.’

The radio fizzled out as Sam drove across state lines.

 


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, I know it's been awhile but I just started my study abroad and haven't had the time to edit. But don't worry, the rest of this will 100% be posted before the week is out :)

 

 

Sam made it back to the city fast than he thought he might. Before he knew it he was sitting in his usual traffic on his usual streets. He spent the night in his car and picked up the next morning just in time to hit the shitty five o’clock traffic that D.C. never failed to deliver on.

It took him what felt like hours before he pulled up to his building and walked up to his door. He fiddled with his key and swung the door open. No dust. Sam loved having Natasha house sit, she was such a stickler for cleanliness with her allergies. He learned about this organizational gift of hers when he first left her in charge of his apartment when he was drafted.

He threw his only box of anything on the kitchen counter and rested his pack on the floor. After months of staring at wide open forests, rolling hills, purple mountains, and clear skies, the grimy views of D.C. somehow didn’t measure up. His cramped little tower felt miles bigger than his actual apartment.

Sam kicked his boots off and meandered to his bedroom to shower. The door opened and Natasha screamed. His bed was stripped of all sheets but the one she was currently trying to put on it. She fell over and laughed at herself almost immediately.

“Holy shit! You scared me!”

“What the hell’re you doing?” laughed Sam.

“Sheets go stale, I wanted you to come home to fresh ones. Your dad said you were on your way,” panted Natasha. She held out a hand and Sam lifted her back onto her feet. She hugged him tight, like she had when he got off the plane. “God I missed you so much, never leave me again.”

“I won’t. You smell so good, everything in Bighorn smells like outside.”

She pulled away. “Did you love it? Did you hate it? Are we gonna talk about the threesome you had with comic book characters?”

“Divin’ right in huh?”

“I have to, Sammy, I’ve been on the edge of my seat for months!”

“I’m gonna shower, and then I’ll do your interview.”

Halfway through his shower, Natasha walked in, planted herself on the counter, and began grilling him with questions. It wasn’t long before Natasha realized Sam had given her almost all of the information via letter. There wasn’t much else to tell but there was plenty to be excited and happy about.

“Toss me a towel,” said Sam. A towel flew over the shower curtain.

“So are you guys…gonna meet up again? I mean—if you’re on the ‘I love you’ stage…” began Natasha.

Sam pulled the curtain back and jumped out. “I don’t know, we didn’t exchange numbers.”

“Yeah but you can look ‘em up.”

“You think I’m the only schmuck out there trying to look up Captain America’s apartment?” laughed Sam.

“Well even if they’re unlisted, you aren’t. They can find you.”

“Yeah…I hope they do.”

“Why didn’t you give ‘em your number?”

“I left in a hurry…The fire grew faster than we thought in the end and we had to leave…but they stayed behind. I don’t know, exchanging numbers and addresses wasn’t on our minds.”

“Why’d they stay?”

“Bucky got lost…somewhere in the woods,” said Sam as he tried to manage his hair. It’d been buzzed for so long that he almost didn’t recognize himself with his new look. “His radio cut out right when we were told to leave.”

“God—Is he okay?” asked Natasha. Sam shrugged.

“I know as much as you at this point. Steve stayed behind for his rescue party but told me to leave since…ya know if I get all burned up my cells don’t magically regenerate.”

“Oh…Sam—I’m sorry, I didn’t know—God you must be so worried.”

Sam shrugged again and put down his comb. And then Natasha’s arms were around him. She always knew just what he needed. He tried to cry but nothing happened, he just shivered and shook. Out of fear, worry, guilt, whatever it was it wracked his whole body. Natasha shushed him and waited patiently.

“I’ll make you some tea, huh?” offered Natasha.

“Thanks,” said Sam.

He got dressed. His mind never leaving Steve and Bucky as he did. It would all be so much better if he just fucking knew what happened. Good or bad, he just needed to know the outcome.

“Sam! Get in here—I think they’re talkin’ about the fires!” screamed Natasha. Sam rushed to the kitchen, slipping and sliding down his wood floors. She put a finger to her lips and turned the radio up.

_‘…growing threat to Wyoming natives. With such strong heat and such dry air, wildfires are all too common and all too dangerous. Shoshone national park evacuated all forest workers and firewatchmen before fires became a real threat and have since kept their mortality level in park-workers at zero. Bighorn, a neighboring park, decided not to follow in Shoshone’s footsteps and since has had two wounded park employees. One, a ranger, was blocked from exiting the park by a fire which resulted in injuries during her attempts to drive out. Another, more serious case, involved a firewatchman. For our listeners who may not know, it is the duty of a firewatchman to report fires. These workers live in the forest and are often seasonal workers. This unexperienced firewatchman was caught at the edge of one of the biggest fires in Bighorn. He was air-lifted out and is currently in a nearby hospital recovering._

_Many critics thus far have said that Bighorn should not be hiring outsiders to do the work of park rangers in regards to the firewatchman position. However, Shoshone uses similarly inexperienced workers to firewatch over the summer months and have never had an issue. The way this reporter sees it, Bighorn’s evacuation policy is severely lacking and is costing innocent people there safety and possibly their lives—'_

Sam switched it off.

“Is that? Is that him? Is he in the hospital?” asked Natasha.

“I guess so. Which is good…if he’s in a hospital he’s recovering and the two of them are really good at that.” Sam stared blankly at the radio until Natasha nudged a warm mug into his hands.

“It’ll be alright. I’m sure.”

“Yeah…” mumbled Steve.

“So what’re you doing for dinner? Should I cook? I bet you haven’t had real food since you left.”

“I’m goin’ to my dad’s, he’s got dinner planned already.”

“Oh good, I really didn’t wanna fight traffic to the grocery store…or cook, I didn’t wanna do that either. Let me find my shoes and we’ll head over.”

In the hospital was better than dead. For the moment at least. A super soldier can’t be killed by fire. Probably. No one was clear on the rules of their serums. But recovering at all had to be better than the alternative no matter what state he was in. Maybe.

“Alright—I’ll drive, you’ve driven enough,” said Natasha.

 

 

 

He knocked three times and Natasha rang the doorbell next to him.

“Lord — I’m comin’ I’m comin’, shut up!” called Sam’s father somewhere deep in the house.

“Hurry up old man!” replied Natasha. Sam rolled his eyes and swallowed his anxiety.

The door swung open and there was his father, a smile spread across his face with intense sincerity. He pulled Sam into a tight hug. Natasha pushed past them and went to set down the borrowed crockery Sam brought back from Bighorn. Sam watched her disappear into the house. His father swung and swayed and hummed.

“Look at you,” he pulled away with his hands firmly on Sam’s shoulders. “Look at your hair!”

“You don’t like it?”

“You look like me in my college days.” He kept grinning, Sam couldn’t help but do the same. “Well, come on in, I’ve got your dinner all ready.”

He made all of Sam’s favorites. After his mother’s death, his father taught himself her old recipes and Sam was sure now that he’d mastered them. Although, three months of nothing but prepackaged food would convince him that even Natasha’s cooking was good.

Sam ate three full plates. His dad and Natasha made sure to poke fun at him for that. His dad eventually cracked open the good wine. Sam had two glasses and regaled them with tales of the magnificent and legendary Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes. They both sat on the edge of their seats listening to Sam recount various scattered memories of their superhuman traits. He kept a smile painted on as he wondered and worried over how Steve and Bucky were. Where they were even. There was so much in the air that he felt like a thoughtless, callous _fan_ as he sat and waxed poetic about the minutiae of their abilities.

They had the peach cobbler on the couch so Natasha could sit back properly. She fell asleep as soon she set her dish on the coffee table. Sam laughed as she kicked her feet onto his lap. His father sat across from them in his armchair. Sam’s mother’s armchair in the corner felt oddly full.

“So you’re close with them now?” yawned his father.

“Yeah. I guess so. We’re _really_ close actually,” said Steve.

“Oh…Really.” His father stared into the middle distance. He understood, he knew was Sam meant. But he didn’t react.

Sam interrupted his blank staring. “I got your letter.” He wanted to talk about it, wanted it to be something they _could_ talk about in person, not just via letters.

“I sent my letter,” replied his dad with the same tired smile. “I meant every word.”

“You still mean ‘em?”

“I don’t say what I don’t mean, Samuel.”

“So yes?” asked Sam, begging for a real answer.

“Yes,” replied his dad. “Here, I found something I thought you might like. Wait there.”

Sam ate the last two bites of his cobbler as one and waited for whatever his father had planned. The floorboard creaked and groaned up the hallway and back until his father returned with a framed photo in hand.

“When Natasha and I cleaned out everything I found all the letters and trinkets you sent me while you were over there.” Natasha kicked Sam too hard. In another scenario he might’ve woken her up or kicked her back but for now he stood, too curious about what his dad held.

He laughed at Natasha squirming her way around the couch before handing Sam the photo. Sam’s calloused hands held the small frame. It was one of few pictures he managed to take while there. Him and Riley. Their first day with the wings, their regimental brothers behind them, flooding the background. Sam remembered taking that picture so vividly.

“I found it with a letter. I hated seeing you in all your uniform and equipment, reminded me of what you were over there doin’. I left it in the envelope but…Well I’ve had it hanging on the wall with your other pictures but if you wanna take it with you, that’s okay too.”

Sam looked up with eyes full of emotion and questions. “You hung it up?”

His dad sighed, something he usually did when he was getting squirrely. “I’m no wordsmith like your momma was but…you know, I love you. All of you. And I always have, even if I didn’t say it when I should’ve. I don’t get it…but I can still learn.”

Sam smiled, his fingers unconsciously traced Riley’s face in the photo. “You’re a good dad, Dad. You didn’t screw up, not that bad anyway.”

“Samuel, I promise, I’ll listen more. To everything you have to say, everything you want to say, but you have to talk more. To me, not just Nat. Who knows how many years we have left together. It’s…still new and confusing to me but I don’t wanna be on my deathbed wishing I would’ve just heard you.”

“It’s a deal,” said Sam, matching the intensity in his father’s face.

“Okay…so tell me about Steve and…or Bucky.” The poor man had no color left in his face. But he wanted to know. He was making a genuine effort despite how visibly uncomfortable he was. Sam couldn’t help but grin.

“Get another glass a wine first. And I’ll leave out the gory details for your sake,” laughed Sam.

Sam’s father held his heart and sighed in mock-relief.

So they sat together around the coffee table, putting back more wine than any men in the history of wine, and talked about Sam and his life. When the wine was gone, they ate their weight in cobbler as Sam described his way around his nights. It was a drunken mess of discomfort and unease but they kept going. For the first time in his life he talked with his father like a son should. He’d never even alluded to having emotions with his father, and here he was describing how he _felt_ about _someone_. Sure, they were both tipsy, eating peach cobbler with their hands, and sitting on the floor while avoiding each other’s gaze. But they were talking.

 

 

 

He pulled at the seams of the armchair a little sharper. He had a few months of lost time to make up for in his long process of dismantling the chair he always sat in. Stitch by stitch by stitch he loosened the upholstery while Dr. Briar stared him semi-blankly.

“Sleeping easier?”

“I didn’t wanna run the whole time I was there. Not while I was trying to sleep anyway,” said Sam with a wide grin.

“That’s fantastic,” said Dr. Briar. “Honestly Sam, I’m very proud of how well you’re working through all this. Very proud.”

“Well…if Natasha hadn’t made me do this job and if I hadn’t met them while I was on the job—“

“Stop undercutting your successes, Sam. _You_ did this for _yourself_. It was all your own work and commitment to yourself.”

“Yeah well.” It was a compliment Sam didn’t know how to take. “I did ‘relapse’ I guess. Got in another one of those _things_. All the sudden I’m back with my unit…But Steve said…that that doesn’t go away.”

“I think that’s a fair assumption. Of course, neither you nor Steve have been out of war all that long. And at very least, you know that Steve’s state is much better than yours is, so you have that to look forward to.”

“Yeah…” Sam massaged his temples. God he still wasn’t used to his hair being any longer than a buzz cut.

“What’s the face about?”

“I’m just worried about ‘em.”

“You didn’t finish telling me about the evac. How was that?”

Sam sat back in the chair with a dramatic sigh. “Where to begin.”

From the beginning. He detailed every tedious detail of fire specifics, about the daily tours through the woods to map the smaller fires and the constant threat of the rager jumping the ravine. Anything to stall, he didn’t want to relive the ending. Endless and tedious details about anything he could remember bubbled out of him until Dr. Briar uncrossed his legs.

“Sam. Move on.”

“Well…” groaned Sam. “So…what happened was…we had that week of…nothing. New fires but no progress on the rager so we figured we’d be fine. But when I went to scope it out for another day off it was right there. I mean right at the banks, right about jump.”

“That’s when you left?”

“That’s when I should’ve left. But Bucky’s radio cut out. Steve and I waited at the furthest tower for as long as we could and…I left and he didn’t,” said Sam. It sounded so pathetic coming out of him now.

“And?” prompted Dr. Briar completely emotionless.

“And…I drove here last week, had a big dinner with my dad. We talked about it all. He was confused but he didn’t wanna show it ‘cause he promised he’d listen more if I talked more and—“

“You’re deflecting. Tell me about the evac.”

Sam looked up at him hopelessly. “We had thirty minutes once the fire jumped to get out. Safely anyway. That was guaranteed. So Steve and I were supposed to wait until that finished before we left. The idea was Bucky would come back by then or his helicopter rescue would’ve found him by then but…nothin’ came.”

“But you know now that he’s in the hospital recovering,” said Dr. Briar. “So why the anxiety?”

“Well…I don’t know how bad he is…”

“But you know he’ll heal. He’s a supersoldier. So why the anxiety?”

Sam held his head in his hands, his fingertips massages his scalp through his growing hair. “I didn’t talk to him—didn’t tell him everything I wanted to and…ya know what if I never do? What if I never see ‘im again?”

“Why do you think you won’t see him?”

“I left him to burn in the woods!” screamed Sam. “I wouldn’t talk to me again either!”

“What help could you have been in those woods—”

“I abandoned him! I left him to rot in that forest!”

“Sam,” Dr. Briar put his stupid fucking clipboard down. Sam had been convinced for months that he just doodled while they spoke.

“I should’ve stayed! I should’ve waited with Steve! I should’ve been flown outta there with him!”

“Why?” asked Dr. Briar in response. “We’ve established you couldn’t have done a thing to help. So why stay and burn?”

“Because that’s what you do for people you love, idiot! Magpies! Even if you can’t help you sit with them until they don’t need help anymore and I didn’t even do that! Hell I didn’t even tell him everything. I just fuckin’ left and checked the news to see if he fuckin’ lived. I don’t deserve to see him. Or Steve.”

“Is this about Bucky or Riley?”

“Shut up,” spat Sam. “It’s about Bucky.”

“Then why are you behaving like he died? You have a chance to tell him everything you want.”

“I don’t deserve that chance,” muttered Sam.

“Because you let him ‘rot in the woods’, right?” said Dr. Briar with a smug smile.

Sam bit his cheek. “This isn’t about Riley.”

“Do you still blame yourself for his death?”

“Do you still blame yourself for your sister’s death?” spat Sam. “…The worst minute and a half of my life was watching Riley go down and feeling so powerless. I didn’t think I’d ever feel that again and here I am…checking the news for updates on him.”

“Sam, don’t make this your doing. You’ve done nothing wrong, you’re still worthy of the relationship you have with him. You’re cutting yourself off because you’re afraid of being forgiven.”

“That’s stupid. Being forgiven feels amazing, why would I be afraid of that?”

“Forgiving yourself for what happened with Bucky, what happened with Riley, it doesn’t mean he doesn’t matter to you anymore. Being guilty over Riley’s death isn’t the only way to remember him, and isn’t how he’d want to be remembered.”

Sam stared at the ceiling fan, turning lazily, and sighed. He hated hearing the solution to his problems. Dr. Briar always made them sound so much easier than they were. Hell, getting rid of his urge to run took three months away from civilization. Who knew how long it would take to deal with…everything else he had to deal with.

“You know,” said Sam, eyes still on the ceiling, “I almost dodged. I almost drove to Canada when I got that recruitment letter. And I didn’t. And…if I had, none of this would’ve happened. I wouldn’t even be talking to you. I’d be out…somewhere…living.”

“And you’d be short three whole magpies. The pain of losing one and being separated from two more is worth what time you had with them, what time you might still have.”

“My Mama used to say that when a dog died…” groaned Sam. “Wouldn’t trade the pain of losin’ ‘em for the time you got to spend with ‘em.”

“She knows her stuff.”

"Don't think this is really apples to apples here, doc.”

“Our hour’s up, Sam. I’ll see you next week,” said Dr. Briar.

Sam left without a final word. He gave a polite goodbye to Alice at the front desk as she walked out with him to call the next patient. Would he end up like all these Korea vets? Well past their midlife crisis and still wandering into the therapist’s office every week to make sure they didn’t snap. A good summer of healing meant nothing if it didn’t come home with him. And in the most literal sense, it hadn’t. Steve and Bucky were gone and the way Sam left them was enough to mar his memories of all three months. Like all the good he’d done for himself, all the progress, it just never happened.

_'Captain America hasn’t had a sighting all summer. However, the silence was broken early this morning,'_ said the shitty waiting-room TV. _'Steve Rogers’s PR rep released a statement today that follows: A dear friend is in a critical medical condition, I would please ask for privacy and understanding from the public in these trying times. Considering that both Rogers, and his childhood friend turned reanimated supersoldier, James Barnes, have been missing from the public eye for three months, it is safe to assume that Barnes is this ‘dear friend’._

_Speculators have said that the bootleg superserum given to Barnes by the Germans may have mutated into cancer. This could be the reason for the hospital stay and for the abrupt disappearance. Given this speculative theory, we can now only wonder if the serum given to Steve Rogers will ever do the same.'_

Sam, very briefly, panicked over Bucky having both fire-related injuries _and_ superhuman cancer. Very briefly. His panicked mind greedily ate up any information about Bucky from the news, whether or not it was even plausible didn’t matter, just that it was an update.

Sam stood in the middle of the waiting room and stared blankly at the ad that distorted over the old TV. Bucky must’ve been transferred to a DC hospital if some paparazzo spotted Steve in the city. He had a chance to see him, to make sure he was recovering, to apologize for leaving. He hated admitting when Dr. Briar was right about his evaluations, but this time it was inevitable. Steve and Dr. Briar were right, he wasn’t at fault for leaving, and he wasn’t ready to forgive himself.

Maybe Riley would’ve hated haunting Sam with this guilt, but Riley didn’t have to live with the knowledge that no amount of praying or wishing or healing was going to bring back his other half. Holding onto the guilt of his death was easy and tangible, cheap and comfortable, it kept Riley alive. And he was scared to let go of it.

“Hey buddy…you still there?” asked a man in the waiting room. He waved his hands to snap Sam out of it.

“Hm?” said Sam. His eyes still fixed on the wavy TV. “Sorry—I was watching the news.”

“Might wanna head back in there,” laughed the man as he gestured to Dr. Briar’s office.

Sam faked a laugh and headed for the door.


	11. Chapter 11

 

 

 

“I’m here for John Johnson,” said Sam to the nurse checking him in. After a few awkward calls to 411, he found D.C.’s best burn unit.

“He’s not taking visitors not on the list,” said the nurse bluntly. So he’d at very least guessed the hospital and Bucky’s alias correctly. Either that or there really was a John Johnson in the burn unit that he was about to surprise.

“I’m on the list,” said Sam. “Wilson.”

The nurse stared at him for a few silent seconds before she begrudgingly flipped through a few papers to the supposed ‘list’. Sam held his breath. If he wasn’t on the list, he could just make a break for it. Run through the doors and somehow have a conversation with Bucky before security dragged him away. He’d get arrested but it’d be worth it to see Bucky’s face again, alive and well. Alive anyway.

“Okay, you’re on the list,” said the nurse. Sam almost regretted he didn’t have time to plan his prisonbreak. “No. Touching. Under any circumstances. Keep a reasonable distance and keep the noise to a minimum out of respect for the other patients. Room 207.”

The nurse lazily handed him a badge and looked away as Sam headed through the swinging doors to the burn unit. 101, 105, 111, stairs, 201, 205, 207. Had the room numbers not given away Bucky’s room, the two guards with ‘Stark Industries’ uniforms would’ve. They asked for his name and he flashed his freshly clipped-on badge.

“Short visit,” said one of the guards. “No shouting.”

“Why would I—whatever, thank you.” Sam squeezed by them and opened the oversized hospital door. Dead ahead was a window with the blinds shut tight and a window sill full of flowers. Only the end of Bucky’s bed was visible from where he stood in the doorway. Half of him wanted to run, but the other half took a few steps towards the window.

Something stopped him from looking over at Bucky on his way. He ignored whatever glimpses he might’ve caught in his peripheral in favor of reading the cards embedded in the bouquets.

 

_It’ll be over before you know it. I’m praying and so is Howard no matter how flippant he sounds. Kisses, Peggy_

 

_Get better, you didn’t survive falling off the side of a damn mountain to die from a little booboo. Love you. — Howard_

 

_If anyone can heal, it’s you. It’ll take time but we both know you’ve got plenty of that left. Call me if you need anything — Gabe_

 

Sam stared at Howard’s message a little too long maybe. He fought the urge to just rip it as he stuffed back between the stems of Bucky’s favorite flowers. He knew the flowers with no messages attached were from Steve who didn’t need to attach a message.

His heart raced and his breathing shallowed as he forced himself to turn, to turn and to look at Bucky. Part of him didn’t want to know, to see everything that happened. Fire was unforgiving and ugly. He didn’t want to know what Hell Bucky went through while Sam was safe in his car. It took most of his will power, but he did it, he turned and he looked. The mid-afternoon glow just barely coming through the window made the whole room a little bluer, a little blurrier. But even that wasn’t enough to disguise Bucky’s mangled and melted skin.

He wasn’t allowed blankets by the look of it, every inch of him had gauze which likely couldn’t be disturbed. Sam’s eyes jumped around the sight of him in a panic. His right arm was a myriad of purples and reds, interrupted by gauze and the bed remote in Bucky’s hand. His right leg was similar with more scabs and more deformations. His chest looked raw. His left leg was part gauze and blood, and part bandages. His face looked better than most of his body, his burns ran entirely up his neck and diagonally across his face but no features were burned off. And the closer Sam got, the more he was sure Bucky’s eyes were okay.

“Buck?” whispered Sam. His closed eyes pointed towards sleep but he had to try. “Can you hear me?”

Intense, deafening silence filled the room. “If you’re awake, wiggle something.”

Bucky’s body remained completely still. Sam’s troubled mind wondered if, maybe, he was mad. Upset at being abandoned. But that’s why Sam came, well partly why.

“Alright, I’ll talk…I wanted to go look for you but…” Bucky knew the circumstances. He didn’t needed a pathetic version of them regurgitated to him on his sick bed. “I should’ve tried harder to find you. I’m sorry. And I’m sorry you’re here, I’m sorry you got so hurt. I’m sorry I never told you everything I feel for you. I don’t know why. I only ever told Steve, not you. It’s not fair but it’s how it worked out. I love you too though. I should’ve told you before now, long before now. I’m sorry for that too. And—“

“Hm…” groaned Bucky. Sam froze. He moved, just barely, but it looked painful. Painful enough to wake him. His eyes fluttered open, he looked like he was on the verge of tears already. Without thinking or even fully registering his surroundings, he hit the call button on his bed’s remote. When a nurse didn’t materialize on the spot, Bucky pressed the button again.

“She’s coming,” said Sam. Bucky jolted, and cried. His body was too raw to jolt. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Bucky nodded. Sam watched him deal with the pain. His face contorted like he was crying, his breathing quickened like he was crying, but no tears ever came. His poor body must’ve been so sick of crying it just wouldn’t do it anymore. A nurse rushed in and wordlessly injected him with something. Morphine or a sedative. Either way Bucky looked grateful as she shuffled out.

“I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to wake you—”

“You finally found me,” said Bucky. His mouth didn’t open much when he spoke, Sam wondered if he’d heard him right.

“Huh?”

“I didn’t know if you would. But you figured it out, even the fake name.” Bucky grinned as much as his new scars would let him.

“I had to…I came by to tell you…I’m sorry. I’m sorry I left you out there. I never should’ve left, I should’ve stayed with you and Steve until I knew you were okay and I’m sorry I didn’t. And I’m sorry I never told you, not really, how I feel. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Bucky looked at him through half-lidded eyes and wordlessly blinked. “Uh huh.”

“Uh huh?”

“Uh-huh. It means ‘yeah’. Or ‘yes’ if you’re a snob.”

“But…that’s all you have to say?” Sam spent days worrying and rethinking his actions from that day. He needed a bigger reaction than ‘uh huh’.

“Sam, I would’ve left. If I had no superpowers, and a family at home, I would’ve left. You waited to the last second and you didn’t leave me alone. I don't know what I would've done and I'm not gonna fault you for what happened. It's okay. I'm just glad you came.”

“Just like that?”

Bucky nodded. “Just like that.”

A weight lifted off of Sam’s chest. After what felt like months, Sam could breath again. Bucky smiled as best as he could and Sam returned the favor. “I love you, you know.”

Bucky held back painful laughter. “Wow, what a surprise.”

It hurt Bucky, and it hurt Sam to watch him, but they laughed. “So who all visited?”

“All your favorites from the comics,” teased Bucky. “Pegs, Monty, Howard. I asked him to come just to make you jealous.”

“Shut up, I’m not jealous.”

“Didn’t you read the card he put with my flowers. ‘Love you, Howard’. Aren’t you worried he’ll steal me away?” said Bucky with a familiar stupid half-grin. Sam rolled his eyes, Bucky suppressed his laughter. “You’re jealous.”

“Forget it, I don’t love you, and I’m not sorry. Have a nice life with Howard.”

“Stop making me laugh,” wheezed Bucky. Sam tried to relax the smile in his face while Bucky held in his laughter. Tried and failed. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too.” Sam leant against the footboard of Bucky’s bed. According to the helpful diagrams all over the room that was as close as he could get. “Where’s Steve?”

“Went home to shower.”

“So…what happened?” asked Sam. “I mean what—what happened to you? What…what—”

“Happened?” interrupted Bucky. “Look at my fucked up leg, can’t you tell what happened?”

Sam stared at the bandages wrapped around Bucky’s left leg. If he was being honest, it was hard to tell what was under the bandages just by looking. “Can I get a hint?”

“I was sorta where you were, I could just barely see the fire. You said we should go so I ran. And I tripped and I fell and I got caught in some kind of animal trap, that’s what fucked my leg. Turns out, they’re harder to escape than you’d think, I couldn’t get it off and I couldn’t stand and I smashed my radio on the way down. It was all very dramatic and glamorous. Picturesque and Hollywood.”

Bucky tried to lighten it all up, to blur out the harsher edges of the story. But the image of him, squirming trapped like an animal, unable to escape the fire, unable to cry for help, hopeless. It sickened him. He wasn’t sure who he was mad at, it was a hard won journey that the focus of his anger wasn’t himself. But blaming nature would do no good, blaming the Bighorn staff could only be half-hearted, and he didn’t need another reason to be mad at God.

“Sammy, why do you look like that?” asked Bucky.

“I wish I could’ve done something,” said Sam through gritted teeth.

Bucky looked at him with sympathetic eyes. “You know…when you’ve lived through what I have…you see it’s kinda pointless to find reason in it. Yeah, you could’ve found me and dragged me back, I could’ve watched my step better and not tripped, we all three could’ve just left when the first warning came out. There’s always shit you could’ve changed but ya know…eventually you play the cards you’re dealt and stop trying to bribe or blame the dealer.”

Sam stared at him silently. For a moment or a day, he couldn’t tell. And Bucky stared right back, expressionless.

A nurse entered with more medicine for Bucky. She injected it and before she was done, Bucky’s eyes were drooping. Sam said a quick goodbye as he fell asleep. He paced for a few minutes, staring at Bucky’s new scars and chewing on what he said. He jotted his phone number down for him or Steve and left.

 

 

 

No calls, no messages, no telegrams, no letters. Nothing. Sam waited three days and got nothing. He made another trip back across the entire city to the burn unit only to find no Stark Industries guards, no Bucky. The nurses couldn’t help him, couldn’t release information about a patient to anyone without a medical license. He was just gone.

“I don’t get it? You said he was happy when you visited him last weekend why—” began Natasha over lunch.

“I don’t know, Nat!” snapped Sam. “Sorry…I…I mean why would he? Why would they?”

Natasha shrugged. “You know ‘em best.”

The glass door to the backyard slid open and Sam’s father stepped in. “Alright I’ve got weiners and I’ve got burgers. You’re each having both because I cooked too much.” He rested an enormous platter of food on the table and set to stirring up the lemonade. “What’s with the sour faces?”

“Trouble in paradise.” Natasha slid two hamburgers onto her plate.

“Oh with the…the boys,” said Sam’s father. He coughed out his discomfort. “Is he still in the hospital?”

“That’s just it. Sam went to visit a few days ago and he’s disappeared. No note,” said Natasha with a mouthful of food.

“How’s no one seen hide or tail of _Catherine America?_ He’s like…the president…but in-shape. Everyone knows where he is all the time.”

“Why do you think I’m worried?” spat Sam.

“I’m sure it’s fine whatever it is.”

“If it’s all fine why are they gone off the face of the earth?”

His father shrugged. “Maybe it’s classified stuff. Those two’ve always been dealing with Nazi this, Communist that. Maybe aliens. Who knows?” His father clapped him on the back and put two hotdogs on his plate for him. “Dig in.”

 

 

 

“What do you mean missing?”

“I _mean_ ,” groaned Sam, “that I went to the hospital and they’re gone.”

“So?” said Dr. Briar.

“What—What do you mean ‘so’?! So I’m worried!”

“You think he died of his burns?”

Sam pulled another thread from the chair and sat back. “No but…”

“But you think they left you.”

“Is that such a stupid fear?” said Sam.

“No but it’s certainly not something you can do anything about.” Dr. Briar took a sip of his coffee and jotted something down. “If they left you then they left you, if they didn’t they’ll find you.”

“So you think they might’ve left me?” Sam thought about that possibility but had never voiced it to anyone. His whole body filled with anxiety as he anticipated Dr. Briar’s answer, as if it were gospel.

“Maybe. Maybe not. The important thing is that you understand why that may or may not have happened.”

Sam groaned. Yes, he went to the doctor to be analyzed and taught about himself, but every time Dr. Briar said anything medical or psychological he wanted to roll his eyes out of his head. “What the hell does that mean?”

“It means that you’ve built up a tendency of relating anything negative in your life to Riley. Every decision you make is another example of how you ‘failed’ him. So, I’m wondering, after all this with Bucky, do you think, had Riley lived, he would’ve stayed with you?”

Sam didn’t have to think about that. For once, for fucking once, he knew the answer without cheating. Without doubting himself or his perception of his life, without telling Dr. Briar what he wanted to hear, the answer rolled off his tongue as sure fact. “Of course he would’ve.”

Dr. Briar smiled. A real smile. It was terrifying to look at. Definitely the smile of a man who rarely had cause to smile. Sam winced and Dr. Briar laughed. The laugh of a man who rarely laughed. “Sam, sometimes I think you don’t know how far you’ve come.”

“Please, stop smiling, you look demonic.”

Sam said goodbye to Dr. Briar and Alice at the front desk. He’d never left Dr. Briar’s office with a smile on his face. Every other session his head was full of his mistakes and his doubts and his fears. And today was no different. But he was smiling this time.

 

 

**CAPTAIN AMERICA BREAKS THREE MONTH SILENCE**

Steve Rogers, colloquially known as Captain America, has released another statement as of today. It reads, ‘I would like to thank the public for giving me my privacy during this trying time. Things are still hectic and stressful but the condition overall of my friend’s health has greatly improved and will hopefully continue to do so.’ The statement was released via Rogers’s PR representative this morning. 

Rogers announced he had an ill friend just over two months ago. He has been seen by paparazzi intermittently in that time but has remained silent on all fronts. The consensus among citizens in D.C. is that the ill friend is James Barnes, his reanimated childhood friend. The suspected illness is cancer derived from a mutation in Barnes’s version of the superhuman serum. None of this has any evidence to back it up, however.  
  
---  
  
 

“SAM PUT THE PAPER DOWN AND FOCUS! ONE TABLESPOON OR TWO?” screamed Natasha. In the last month she’d become determined to cook good food. For Sharon’s sake if not her own.

“Nat, I told you like ten times, it said three,” added Sharon hopelessly.

“I think I put in four…” said Natasha mostly to herself.

“I know you made a huge deal about how you wanted to cook Thanksgiving this year but my dad—“ began Sam.

“I owe your dad a librarian’s yearly salary in food money, I can _at least_ make the fucking stuffing.” The timer went off. Natasha whipped her head to look blankly at the oven with the expression of a panicked dog. “What…What the hell was that? What’s in the oven?”

“Oh shit, it’s smoking,” said Sharon. Natasha let out a pathetic whine. “It’s okay, this is the trial run, we’ve still got time.”

Sharon stood to investigate whatever was burning in the oven while Natasha held back tears and tried to siphon salt out of her stuffing. Sam averted his eyes from the chaos and focused them on the picture of Steve splashed across the front of the paper. He’d grown a beard. In the last month of their summer together, he stopped shaving and got pretty far along with it but it looked better now, more filled in. Or maybe the ink smudged.

He called 411 a few times and asked to be wired through to Steve Rogers a few times but no dice. That was his only lead, his only clue for how to get in touch with them. He tried calling their fake names too but nothing came of it. He just couldn’t believe that this was how they’d go about ending it. But maybe they were more important to him than vice versa. He voiced that thought to Dr. Briar who didn’t discount it. He gave it merit, just like he gave all of Sam’s theories. But in the end, no matter what really happened, Dr. Briar wanted him to be okay with it somehow. And he was trying.

“It’s…it’s so burned…” whispered Natasha to the rolls. “Thanksgiving is tomorrow and…I can’t cook bread.”

“You don’t…cook bread, Nat, you _bake_ it,” said Sharon. Natasha looked at her with big, pathetic, wet eyes. Sharon sighed. “It’s okay. We’ve got the spare batch of dough, it’ll be okay.”

“Speaking of, Nat you already bought the bird right?” asked Sam after he realized there was no enormous turkey in his tiny fridge.

“Huh?”

“That’s what I thought. I’m gonna go try and find a turkey…at a store…three days before Thanksgiving.”

 

 

 

He could get four small chickens or one dubious turkey. His father would rather die than not have turkey or ham on Thanksgiving. But the ham was already gone and he wasn’t sure gambling on a semi-thawed turkey was a good idea. He held it for a minute or two, trying to find other soft spots where the turkey thawed but found none.

If he got food poisoning it wouldn’t be the worst thing but Natasha would never have the confidence to cook again. Or maybe he could just throw up in private to spare her feelings. He threw the bird in the basket and made a quick run of everything else they’d need for dinner knowing Natasha needed a buffer.

Canned cranberries, green beans, easy-rise dough and premade rolls, gravy cubes, and prepackaged stuffing. He’d hide it in the fridge until she burned something else and then pretend he just bought it. The only sound in the store was the shitty music being pumped through it. That and the sound of rubber screeching to a half in the aisle next to Sam’s. It sounded like a small car crash. Loud enough for Sam to fall silent and try to eavesdrop.

“Careful, the floor’s wet,” said a familiar voice.

“Careful, the floor’s wet,” mocked another familiar voice.

It sounded like them. It couldn’t be them. But it sounded like them. Sam whipped his poor cart around to the next aisle, hoping to catch a glimpse of them. And maybe he did.

Someone with Steve’s hair and build rounded around the opposite side of the aisle. It could’ve been him. It could’ve been a lot of people too but it could’ve been _him_. Sam ran and came to sharp stop on the other side of the aisle. He saw no one. No one that looked like either of them.

He returned home with the goods, tired and frustrated and in the mood to argue about nothing. Luckily he came back to Natasha and Sharon, who were also tired and frustrated and arguing about nothing. After releasing some of his anger, his pain, Sam helped them clean up after Natasha’s multiple mistakes and messes in relative silence. They only ever spoke to make sure they didn’t ram into eachother with dishes. All three with clenched jaws and disappointment spilling out of them for different reasons.

It could've been them. Sam's mind tuned out the TV. The three of them crammed together on the couch and turned something on but Sam couldn't focus. Because it could've been them. And what if it was and they were so close and Sam just didn't check the deli aisle and lost touch with them forever. What if they found someone new already. It was unlikely but so was Sam getting together with them. It explained their sudden disappearance off the face of the earth. 

His mind worked itself into a tizzy over every possible permutation of what might or might not've happened. Until it just turned off.

 

 

 

Sam woke to a knock on the door. He didn’t remember falling asleep but Sharon and Natasha were passed out next to him. His couch just barely held all three of them and his joints made sure he knew that. He scrambled up to quiet whoever was at the door. He shut the door to the living room to try and let Natasha and Sharon sleep while he dealt with a neighbor no doubt complaining about the smell of Natasha's 'cooking'.

His sleepy hands struggled to open the door with one sleepy pull.

“We thought that was you,” said Steve. Standing there, in all his glory. A shitty disguise of a baseball cap and sunglasses, a beard that had thickened up nicely, and hair that was just a bit too long. Next to him was Bucky, hoisted on crutches. He wore a similar disguise but nothing would hide those distinctive burns.

He wanted to hug them, or hit them, kiss them, slam the door in their faces, beg for forgiveness or make them beg. He wanted to do it all and he didn’t have the time. So Steve decided for him. He kissed him hard, harder than he had the day they separated in the fire. And Sam clung to him for dear life.

He pulled away and squeezed Sam too tight but he wouldn’t complain.

“Don’t mind me,” said Bucky as he clambered by in his crutches. Steve let Sam go and Bucky waddled over to him. His burns were fading on his arms and face, maybe one day they’d completely disappear. But for now his face was still marked in some places and from what Sam could see so was the rest of him. “If you wanna stare at my burns any more you gotta buy a ticket.”

“Do they still hurt?”

“Who cares?” Bucky couldn’t pull him in, couldn’t be as forceful as he wanted, not with his crutches. But he still kissed Sam. He still felt the same.

“Where’ve you been?” mumbled Sam. He wanted to be angry, angrier than he was at least, but every kiss every touch just sucked it out of him.

“Where have _we_ been?” said Steve.

“Let’s sit down first please God,” said Bucky through gritted teeth.

Sam showed them through the kitchen to the little table. It only had two chairs since only he and Natasha ever sat at it. Steve sat on the counter and let him and Bucky sit. Bucky groaned as he stretched his aching leg out, Sam stared.

“Remember what I said, Wilson. Buy a ticket.”

“Sorry.” Sam turned his eyes to Steve. “I’m ready for my explanation.”

“ _You’re_ explanation?!” Steve gestured wildly and Bucky withheld laughter. “We’ve been lookin’ high and low for you!”

“You have?” Sam smiled and couldn’t stop. He didn’t care about the explanation anymore, he didn’t care what happened all he needed to know was that they were trying. But he’d still get the explanation.

“Yes, _we have_. Did you know you’re not in the book?” snapped Steve.

“Since when am I not in the book?” Sam cocked his head.

“I don’t know, but I called every Wilson in D.C. and got no leads. No phone number no address. You didn’t give us Natasha’s last name so we couldn’t even find you through her."

“I thought, you might’ve just changed numbers or whatever. So when they switched me to the ICU I tried to call you to let you know where I was,” interjected Bucky. “But the number you left me at the hospital was disconnected. I thought—I thought that was a pretty clear fuckin’ message.”

Bucky looked how Sam did moments ago. Everything Sam felt, all the anger and frustration of them leaving him without a trace, Bucky had felt from his hospital bed. “It was disconnected?”

“Yeah,” Bucky’s voice cracked. “I called it a few times but…”

“Which is why we’re all lucky that I’m here,” said Steve, distracting Sam from Bucky who was on the verge of falling apart. “I was damn sure you didn’t just go off grid. But you’re a hard man to find. I had to get Stark to find you in the end but we made it.”

“I wouldn’t—I wouldn’t up and leave like that, you guys know that right?” said Sam.

“I knew it…Bucky…well…” began Steve.

“You thought I just split?” Sam tried and failed to disguise the hurt in his voice.

“Well you didn’t exactly expect us to show up here did you?” spat Bucky. “We’re even.”

Silence was uncharacteristic of the three of them. Someone was always talking and it was usually Steve. But even he was quiet now as they all three looked at each other blankly. Back and forth and back and forth until.

“Sam, I’m gonna start on the turkey,” said Natasha with a big yawn as she came through the swinging door to the kitchen. The three of them stopped staring at each other and started staring at her. She stared right back. “Hello…Didn’t know we had company.”

“They just got here out of nowhere—”

“I’m Steve Rogers,” said Steve. Bucky rolled his eyes and so did Sam as he and Natasha shook hands. As if _he_ of all people needed any introduction.

“Yeah I’ve heard of you,” laughed Natasha. “I had you as a doll when I was fourteen.”

“Thanks,” said Steve.

“I’m Natasha.”

“ _You’re_ Natasha!” screamed Bucky. She jumped.

“Yeah why?” Her poor sleepy eyes looked suspicious and scared at the same time.

“You’re the one sending us the beer and the food and—Sam told us all about you!” said Bucky. His excitement wasn’t enough to get him to stand so he just leant forward excitedly and tried not to move his leg.

“Nice to finally meet you,” said Steve.

“You too…From what Sam’s said…we know an awful lot about each other,” said Natasha, here eyes moved between the two of them.

“We do,” said Steve, his cheeks turning red.

“So…either of you know how to cook a turkey?”

 

 

 

They crammed into Sam’s bed for the night. After sleeping on top of each other in a twin bed, Sam’s full sized might as well have been a king. Bucky got half the bed because of his condition, Steve and Sam split the other half and woke up sore. Natasha slept on the couch so she could cook the turkey the second she woke up. Which she did.

Bucky played up his injuries just a bit and got out of helping in the kitchen while everyone else wrapped tinfoil around Schrodinger’s food. Bucky and Steve had no plans with anyone but each other for Thanksgiving. The Commandos, Peggy, Howard, all of them, had invited them over as they apparently did every year but Bucky wasn’t in a condition to travel that far. So, although Sam’s dad’s house ended up being their only option, Sam was sure they would’ve come with him anyway.

Sam told them, reassured them that in a drunken state they’d hashed everything out, that his dad knew everything. They wouldn’t have to walk on eggshells. Though Bucky still would, it’d be awhile before he warmed up to anyone’s dad. Natasha promised them, it wouldn’t be a big deal. She told them how she surprised Sam’s dad with Sharon for dinner one night and it went over just fine. Bucky said nothing other than ‘you’re not his kid’.

Natasha gave the turkey to Steve to carry and ran up to the door, yams in arm, and knocked on the door. Sam and Sharon helped Bucky out of the car in the meantime. Steve stood midway between car and door with a turkey in his hands, unsure what to do. Sam had never seen him be so awkward, it was refreshing.

“Nat!” said Sam’s dad as he wrapped his arms around her and the green beans.

“Christ — put me back in the car,” whispered Bucky.

“It’s gonna be fine,” replied Sharon before Sam could say a word.

“Fuck you,” said Bucky as he fell into his crutches.

“Knowing my aunt doesn’t mean you can be a dick.”

“I got my face melted off, leave me alone, Carter,” said Bucky with a hint of a smile.

Sharon gave up and hurried to greet Sam’s dad with a hug. Then she went inside. And so there they were, the three of them, out in his dad’s walkway. Well, except for Steve who was stood in the middle of the grass with the turkey no doubt burning his palms.

Sam’s dad waved at them. Neither of them had free hands to wave back, so Sam had to. They stood in silence for, roughly, a year.

“Well y’all gonna come in or what?”

“Yes, sir,” said Steve. He rushed by Sam’s dad to put the turkey down. Sam walked with Bucky up the steps. He hadn’t quite mastered stairs and crutches so Sam spotted him.

“You okay, kid?” asked his dad from the doorway.

“Yeah, crutches are just in-style now and I’m really committed,” said Bucky. His dad forced down a chuckle. It wasn’t hard for Sam or Natasha to make him laugh but it was damn hard for a stranger to make his dad laugh.

“Well crutch your way in,” replied his dad.

Sam was preparing an apology on his dad’s behalf but Bucky laughed. Sam didn’t question it. They got over the awkward introductions in the kitchen while Natasha put all of her dishes in the ovens to warm. Sharon, who had been through the same exact situation, eased the tension in just the right spots. Sam’s dad asked them if they ever met aliens, the two of them took too long to answer. Sam’s dad took that as a solid yes and continued his questioning.

Natasha shooed them out of the kitchen eventually as space grew sparse. Drinking the good wine also eased the tension between them all.

Steve, not Bucky, helped set the table. His father said grace and Natasha, being the chef, got to cut the turkey. And it wasn’t raw. In fact it tasted good. Natasha nearly cried when she had her first bite of everything. They thanked and praised her profusely, she basked. It had been maybe, ten years since he’d seen the Thanksgiving table that full, that loud and happy.

“I’d like to make a toast,” said Sam’s dad three glasses in. “To Darlene and to Riley. They’re the ones making us this happy from the beyond, I can tell.”

Natasha raised her glass to meet his first. Then Sam, then everyone else. If Sam couldn’t feel the two of them before, he could then. He even thought he might’ve smelled his mother’s perfume. The rest of dinner was spent remembering and recounting stories Sam’s dad remembered about Sam’s mom, and particularly embarrassing stories from Natasha and Sam’s shared childhood.

Natasha split the leftovers between them evenly and used the remainder of the tinfoil to do it. She gave Sam’s dad the entirety of the third sweet potato pie, he’d earned it. His dad opened another bottle of wine and tried to decide on a record. Just as Natasha insisted he play Cream, Bucky suggested a second round of Billie Holiday. Sam’s dad lit up and made sure Natasha could hear him overruling her.

They drank more but not much more. Bucky started to doze off in Sam’s mother’s chair. Before he could, Sam’s dad woke him.

“Wake up, I wanna take a picture.”

“Of what?” croaked Bucky. But his dad was already gone to the attic to get the tripod. Sam watched him go, equal parts happy and confused.

“He likes you two,” said Sam into his wine.

“Thank God. I was starting to give him government secrets all night to try and win him over. He's never satisfied,” said Steve with a relieved sigh.

Bucky said nothing but Sam could see his mouth curling into a sleepy smile. His dad burst into the room and set the camera on the tripod. “Alright, everyone get in the frame, I don’t remember how much film I have.”

They all huddled together in front of the window while Sam’s dad tried to remember how to work the timer. They took three just to be sure. Once they were finished Bucky fell asleep. Sam dismantled the tripod for his dad and insisted he take it back to the attic on his behalf. Sam’s dad still followed him to be _sure_ Sam put it away right.

“It goes in the box that says tripod,” said his dad from the ladder into the attic.

“I figured.” Sam climbed back down and let the ladder fold back into the ceiling. “Hey…thanks for doing everything.”

“I didn’t cook a thing, Samuel, that was Natasha.” He cocked his head. “Didn’t she cook at your house, how did you miss—“

“I meant…how you’ve been acting. All happy and welcoming and…Thanks. I know it’s not necessarily that easy for you.”

“It’s no act. I’m happy.” He punctuated the thought with a slightly tipsy grin. “Now I have people who’ll listen to my old music. Which we can’t actually hear from here. Back downstairs, kid.”

Sam followed behind him at a slower pace. He watched his dad reenter the room like he was 20 years old again. Watched everyone smile wide when he tried to dance. Watched Natasha hazily join in with his horrible dancing. Watched Sharon egg them both on. Watched Steve drape a blanket over Bucky who was comfortable enough to sleep. That’s all he wanted. It took him twenty three odd years, a war, and two deaths to get it but he was there.

And he wished his mama were there, he wished Riley were there. But they were, in a way. In a way, they molded the entire evening themselves. It certainly felt like an night the two of them would cook up together. He was with his family and he was happy. And he was full of good cooking that Natasha of all people had produced, and good wine that his dad hoarded from the fifties. And the music played at just the right volume. And Bucky looked so peaceful when he slept these days. He had another slice of pecan pie and watched Natasha and his dad dance to Perry Como before he drifted to sleep.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is the end. I really loved writing this fic and hopefully you guys liked reading it. I'll love you for always if you comment. I'm posting a new fic soon in case anyone cares, hopefully you read that one too :) Either way, I had fun! <3

 

 

“I think it’d be too much for the public. I barely know what to call us. I can't imagine explaining to the masses everything the three of us are,” laughed Sam. “I kinda like it being between just us.”

“As long as you’ve all come to a unanimous agreement, it doesn’t matter what the agreement actually was,” said Dr. Briar. He hadn’t written anything down in months.

“Natasha and Sharon moved in together too — well they decided to. They’re actually packing up and moving Sharon into Nat’s next weekend.”

“How’s your dad in all this?”

Sam shrugged. “He got over any squirreliness by Christmas. Bucky’s parents weren’t exactly stellar so he had a harder time warming up to my dad, but he did.”

“Sam do you even remember the state you were in two years ago? Just two years ago, much less when I first met you,” said Dr. Briar.

“Are you trying to tell me I don’t have to come here anymore?”

Dr. Briar laughed and shook his head. He cut his laughter off as abruptly as he could, but his eyes still wrinkled. “If you don’t want to come anymore, by all means, I’ll cancel you. But you were still in a war. It’s gonna take a little more than a whirlwind romance to calm that sea.”

“I’m not a kid, Briar. I know this doesn’t fix it all…but it helps. I didn’t think you’d be right, ya know, about ya know needing this kind of time with people. With magpies. But…”

“But,” Dr. Briar confidently crossed his hands behind his head, “once again, Briar is irrefutably correct.”

“It’s the little victories for you isn’t it?” mocked Sam.

“Hey, you were a tough nut to crack. One of the only guys who didn’t spill his guts on the third session.”

“Well, you were pretty easy to ignore those first few sessions,” said Sam.

“So are you doing anything for Saturday?”

Sam sighed. His fingers found the stitches in the upholstery and started pulling them, one by one. “We’re gonna go over. Flowers feels weird so we’re gonna bring a six pack and just…sit for awhile I guess. I’ve only ever done it alone so.”

“Do you wanna keep doing it alone? You can still change your plans.”

“I don’t _want_ to be alone I just don’t know…what to say in front of someone else.”

“You’ll figure it out.” Dr. Briar checked his watch. “Sorry, Sam. Our time’s up.”

“We still on for next week?”

“Noon, Thursday,” said Dr. Briar as he scanned Sam’s chart.

“Wear that dress I like,” teased Sam. Dr. Briar shooed him out of the office with one of his unnatural grins spread across his face. One day Sam would have to sit him down and teach him to smile, he clearly couldn’t teach himself.

 

 

 

Bucky taped his last box shut and labelled it, in big ugly writing, ‘SHARON CLOTHES’. Sharon was a self-proclaimed minimalist and yet her apartment barely had room to walk. Sam was volunteered by Natasha to help them move Sharon out. Bucky and Steve were also volunteered by Natasha. It was easy for her to do since the three of them lived together. Bucky whined but not as much as Steve.

“Last box,” said Bucky.

“We can throw it,” said Steve. “Clothes don’t break, lets just toss it out the window.”

“Let me go down to the car and aim at me,” said Bucky.

“You’re two enormous super soldiers, stop acting like you’re old ladies with arthritis lifting hundred pound weights. It’s one measly day of moving like five boxes!” Natasha put her box of Sharon’s shit on top of the one in Steve’s arms. Steve let out a groan and waddled out the door. Bucky followed behind with an armful of two pillows and a lamp.

Sam couldn’t help but grin as they left in their petulant huff.

“How are you in love with those babies?” said Natasha.

“You’re the one in love with a woman who hasn’t thrown away a newspaper in ten years.”

“We’re gonna cut back,” said Natasha with a nervous laugh. She and Sam opened a new box and started loading the dishes. Natasha’s short arms nearly sent a whole stack of plates crashing down so Sam took over. “What time do you need to leave?”

“I wanna get there when it’s empty,” said Sam. “I don’t know…maybe I should go when it’s full.”

“Stick to the plan. You don’t need to second guess yourself this late in the game.”

“Alright, then I need to leave in about thirty minutes.” Sam laid the last plate in the box. Natasha shoved a few mugs in next to them and started taping.

“So,” she ripped the tape with her teeth, “you sure about taking them with?”

“What happened to not second guessing?”

“I’m just curious.”

“They wanted to come and it feels like a good time. It’ll probably be a little awkward but…oh well,” said Sam with a forced smile. Natasha saw right through him. She stood on her toes, held his cheeks, and kissed his forehead.

“Love you, Sam.”

Sam smirked and wrapped his arms around her small frame.“Love you too.”

“When do we leave?” Bucky kissed Sam’s cheek on his way through the kitchen.

“One more box and then you’re done,” said Natasha, peeling herself off of Sam before Bucky could run from work.

Steve complained all the way down the stairs and shoved the last box into Sharon’s car. Bucky secured the rope on her trunk, nearly snapping the handle off in the process. Sharon fit in the driver’s seat just fine, Natasha sprawled out in the backseat on top of Sharon’s dresser. The three of them watched Sharon and Natasha drive off to deliver their second load of Sharon’s crap to Natasha’s apartment.

“Alright, you ready?” asked Steve. Sam squinted in the sun and nodded. He was never ready but he always went.

“Yeah, let’s get gone before the two of them ask for more help,” said Sam.

 

 

 

The drive was dead silent. That’s how Sam wanted it if he was honest. He wanted to be alone with his thoughts and his memories, just like he was every year. Steve and Bucky gave him that silence and let him imagine he was alone in the car. He wondered all week if it was the right choice to bring them. Something about it felt strange. But something else felt even stranger to leave them behind. Like they were a secret or something.

Sam pulled into the series of driveways. Other families were on their way out, Sam always timed it like that. Sam wondered if maybe he got lonely, if it was sad to watch all the other families all day and have to wait until the end of the day for Sam. But deep down, Sam knew this fit them better.

He parked, no cars on either side of him. There never were. Sam led the way, and Bucky and Steve followed in silence. Sam thought they should be louder, happier, but they were taking their cues from him. And he didn’t feel like talking. He never did.

Stone after stone after cross after cross after stone. Until they were there. Sam could walk the trail in his sleep. In his first months back, he had. Sam took a shuddering breath in and stared at the writing. That was his usual routine. But things had to change sooner or later.

Steve cracked off the first beer in the six pack and handed it off to Sam. “We’re celebrating remember.”

Sam nodded. He opened three beers for them with his keys. Steve didn’t get the poptab ones, of course he didn’t. Sam sipped his beer through the too-small hole his carkeys made and wondered if he was supposed to talk.

“Today, this fine, June late afternoon, we celebrate the twenty fifth birthday of Riley Jacobson,” said Steve in too grandiose a voice.

“It’s his birthday, not the bicentennial,” laughed Sam.

“Well, you weren’t gonna talk,” said Steve.

Sam smiled. His eyes drew back to the 1953 - 1974 carved into his headstone. The stones on his grave had been disturbed that day, by his mother no doubt. Sam added one. After a few beats, Sam and Bucky did the same.

“Tell us more,” said Bucky.

“I’ve told it all,” said Sam. “His story’s finite. Has been since ’74.”

“There’s plenty you haven’t told us. So go ahead.” Bucky sat down. The confidence with which Bucky sat between two graves was impressive. Sam did the same, and Steve, reluctantly, joined the winning team. “Alright, I wanna hear something good, Wilson.”

“Did I tell you about the time, on a free night we had, when he and I stole one of the jeeps—have I told you this?” asked Sam.

Bucky shook his head emphatically. “No, never.”

“He stole a jeep?” laughed Steve. “And he wasn’t dishonorably discharged or something?”

“Let him tell the story!”

Sam started the story. He’d told them the story multiple times. But his stories about Riley were only so many. He’d never have the chance to make more with him so Bucky and Steve let him repeat a few now and then. They listened like they were hearing it the first time, they always did.

They each drank their allotted two beers. Sam insisted they finish them. There was nothing Riley hated more than an unfinished drink, especially on his birthday. He told three, maybe four more stories about Riley. Steve and Bucky laughed in all the right places, they had practice. Sam had never laughed and smiled so much on Riley’s birthday. It had been a solemn occasion the last four years. Riley would’ve liked this better. By far.

For his sake, Sam recounted some of his favorite stories between the three of them. Memories from that summer or whenever that had them all three belting out laughing at themselves. Yes, Riley would’ve loved to be there with them. Though he probably never really left. If Sam closed his eyes, he could feel that _feeling_ he got when he was near him. Only now it came from every direction.

Sam said his goodbyes for the time being. He’d be back soon enough. Bucky and Steve gave their own form of goodbyes too. No families around meant they could take each other’s hands if just for a few brief moments. Just until they got to the parking lot. Just until then. But just until then was plenty.


End file.
